Part 12

Count Ernst, taking small delight in any of these pastimes, amused himself with hunting; made war on the foxes in the dry wildernesses, and pursued the shy chamois into the barren mountains. The knights of his train "disagreed" with the glowing sun by day, and the damp evening air under the open sky, and sneaked to a side when their lord called for his horses; therefore, in his hunting expeditions, he was generally attended only by his faithful Squire, named the mettled Kurt, and a single groom. Once, his eagerness in clambering after the chamois, had carried him to such a distance, that the sun was dipping in the Mid-sea wave before he thought of returning; and, fast as he hastened homewards, night came upon him at a distance from the camp. The appearance of some treacherous _ignes fatui_, which he mistook for the watch-fires, led him off still farther. On discovering his error, he resolved to rest beneath a tree till daybreak. The trusty Squire prepared a bed of soft moss for his lord, who, wearied by the heat of the day, fell asleep before he could lift his hand to bless himself, according to custom, with the sign of the cross. But to the mettled Kurt there came no wink of sleep, for he was by nature watchful like a bird of darkness; and though this gift had not belonged to him, his faithful care for his lord would have kept him waking. The night, as usual in the climate of Asia, was serene and still; the stars twinkled in pure diamond light; and solemn silence, as in the Valley of Death, reigned over the wide desert. No breath of air was stirring, yet the nocturnal coolness poured life and refreshment over herb and living thing. But about the third watch, when the morning star had begun to announce the coming day, there arose a din in the dusky remoteness, like the voice of a forest stream rushing over some steep precipice. The watchful squire listened eagerly, and sent his other senses also out for tidings, as his sharp eye could not pierce the veil of darkness. He hearkened, and snuffed at the same time, like a bloodhound, for a scent came towards him as of sweet-smelling herbs and trodden grass, and the strange noise appeared to be approaching. He laid his ear to the ground, and heard a trampling as of horses' hoofs, which led him to conclude that the Infernal Chase was hunting in these parts. A cold shudder passed over him, and his terror grew extreme. He shook his master from sleep; and the latter, having roused himself, soon saw that here another than a spectral host was to be fronted. Whilst his groom girded up the horses, the Count had his harness buckled on in all haste.

The dim shadows gradually withdrew, and the advancing morning tinted the eastern hem of the horizon with purple light. The Count now discovered, what he had anticipated, a host of Saracens approaching, all equipped for fight, to snatch some booty from the Christians. To escape their hands was hopeless, and the hospitable tree in the wide solitary plain gave no shelter to conceal horse and man behind it. Unluckily the massy steed was not a Hippogryph, but a heavy-bodied Frieslander, to which, by reason of its make, the happy talent of bearing off its master on the wings of the wind had not been allotted; therefore the gallant hero gave his soul to the keeping of God and the Holy Virgin, and resolved on dying like a knight. He bade his servants follow him, and sell their lives as dear as might be. Thereupon he pricked the Frieslander boldly forward, and dashed right into the middle of the hostile squadron, who had been expecting no such sudden onset from a single knight. The Pagans started in astonishment, and flew asunder like light chaff when scattered by the wind. But seeing that the enemy was only three men strong, their courage rose, and there began an unequal battle, in which valour was surpassed by number. The Count meanwhile kept plunging yarely through the ranks; the point of his lance gleamed death and destruction to the Infidel; and when it found its man, he flew inevitably from his saddle. Their Captain himself, who ran at him with grim fury, his manly arm laid low, and with his victorious spear transfixed him writhing in the dust, as St. George of England did the Dragon. The mettled Kurt went on with no less briskness; though availing little for attack, he was a master in the science of dispatching, and sent all to pot who did not make resistance; as a modern critic butchers the defenceless rabble of the lame and halt, who venture with such courage in our days into the literary tilt-yard: and if now and then some fainting invalid, with furious aim, like an exasperated Reviewer-hunter, did hurl a stone at him with enfeebled fist, he heeded it little; for he knew well that his basnet and iron jack would turn a moderate thump. The groom, too, did his best to make clear ground about him, and kept his master's back unharmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat the strongest horse; four Caffre bulls an African lion; and, by the common tale, one troop of mice an archbishop, as the _Maeusethurm_, or Mouse-tower, on the Rhine, by Huebner's account, gives open testimony; so the Count of Gleichen, after doing knightly battle, was at length overpowered by the number of his enemies. His arm grew weary, his lance was shivered into splinters, his sword became blunt, and his Friesland horse at last staggered down upon the gory battle-field. The Knight's fall was the watch-word of victory; a hundred valiant arms stormed in on him to wrench away his sword, and his hand had no longer any strength for resistance. As the mettled Kurt observed the Knight come down, his own courage sank also, and along with it the pole-axe, wherewith he had so magnanimously hammered in the Saracenic skulls. He surrendered at discretion, and pressingly entreated quarter. The groom stood in blank rumination; bore himself enduringly; and awaited with oxlike equanimity the stroke of some mace upon his basnet, which should crush him to the ground.

But the Saracens were less inhuman victors than the conquered could have expected; they disarmed their three prisoners of war, and did them no bodily harm whatever. This mild usage took its rise not in any movement of philanthropy, but in mere spy's-mercy: from a dead enemy there is nothing to be learnt, and the special object of this roaming troop had been to get correct intelligence about the state of matters in the Christian host at Ptolemais. The captives, being questioned and heard, were next, according to the Asiatic fashion, furnished with slave-fetters; and as a ship was just then lying ready to set sail for Alexandria, the Bey of Asdod sent them off with it as a present to the Sultan of Egypt, to confirm at Court their description of the Christian resources and position. The rumour of the bold Frank's valour had arrived before him at the gates of Grand Cairo; and so pugnacious a prisoner might, on entering the hostile metropolis, have merited as pompous a reception as the Twelfth of April saw bestowed upon the Comte de Grasse in London, where the merry capital emulously strove to let the conquered sea-hero feel the honour which their victory had done him: but Moslem self-conceit allows no justice to foreign merit. Count Ernst, in the garb of a felon, loaded with heavy chains, was quietly locked into the Grated Tower, where the Sultan's slaves were wont to be kept.

Here, in long painful nights, and mournful solitary days, he had time and leisure to survey the grim stony aspect of his future life; and it required as much steadfastness and courage to bear up under these contemplations, as to tilt it on the battle-field among a wandering horde of Arabs. The image of his former domestic happiness kept hovering before his eyes; he thought of his gentle wife, and the tender shoots of their chaste love. Ah! how he cursed the miserable feud of Mother-church with the Gog and Magog of the East, which had robbed him of his fair lot in existence, and fettered him in slave-shackles never to be loosed! In such moments he was ready to despair altogether; and his piety had well-nigh made shipwreck on this rock of offence.

In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among anecdotic persons, a wondrous story of Duke Henry the Lion, which at that period, as a thing that had occurred within the memory of man, found great credence in the German Empire. The Duke, so runs the tale, while proceeding over sea to the Holy Land, was, in a tempest, cast away upon a desert part of the African coast; where, escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter and succour in the den of a hospitable Lion. This kindness in the savage owner of the cave had its origin not in the heart, but in the left hind-paw; while hunting in the Libyan wilderness, he had run a thorn into his foot, which so tormented him, that he could hardly move, and had entirely forgotten his natural voracity. The acquaintance being formed, and mutual confidence established between the parties, the Duke assumed the office of chirurgeon to the royal beast, and laboriously picked out the thorn from his foot. The patient rapidly recovered, and, mindful of the service, entertained his lodger with his best from the produce of his plunder; and, though a Lion, was as friendly and officious towards him as a lap-dog.

The Duke, however, soon grew weary of the cold collations of his four-footed landlord, and began to long for the flesh-pots of his own far-distant kitchen; for in readying the game handed in to him, he by no means rivalled his Brunswick cook. Then the home-sickness came upon him like a heavy load; and seeing no possibility of ever getting back to his paternal heritage, the thought of this so grieved his soul, that he wasted visibly, and pined like a wounded hart. Thereupon the Tempter, with his wonted impudence in desert places, came before him, in the figure of a little swart wrinkled manikin, whom the Duke at first sight took for an ourang-outang; but it was the Devil himself, Satan in proper person, and he grinned, and said: "Duke Henry, what ails thee? If thou trust to me, I will put an end to all thy sorrow, and take thee home to thy wife to sup with her this night in the Castle of Brunswick; for a lordly supper is making ready there, seeing she is about to wed another man, having lost hope of thy life."

This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the Duke's ear, and cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. Rage burnt in his eyes like flames of fire, and desperation uproared in his breast. If Heaven will not help me in this crisis, thought he, then let Hell! It was one of those entangling situations which the Arch-crimp, with his consummate skill in psychological science, can employ so dextrously when the enlisting of a soul that he has cast an eye on is to prosper in his hands. The Duke, without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded his sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. "Quick, my good fellow!" said he; "carry me, and this my trusty Lion, to Brunswick, before the varlet reach my bed!"--"Well!" answered Blackbeard, "but dost thou know the carriage-dues?"--"Ask what thou wilt!" said Duke Henry; "it shall be given thee at thy word."--"Thy soul at sight in the other world," replied Beelzebub.--"Done! Be it so!" cried furious jealousy, from Henry's mouth.

The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, between the two contracting parties. The Infernal Kite directly changed himself into a winged Griffin, and seizing the Duke in the one clutch, and the trusty Lion in the other, conveyed them both in one night from the Libyan coast to Brunswick, the towering city, founded on the lasting basis of the Harz, which even the lying prophecies of the Zillerfeld vaticinator have not ventured to overthrow. There he set down his burden safely in the middle of the market-place, and vanished, just as the watchman was blowing his horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then carol forth a superannuated bridal-song from his rusty mum-washed weasand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, still gleamed like the starry heaven with the nuptial illumination; every street resounded with the din and tumult of the gay people streaming forward to gaze on the decorated bride, and the solemn torch-dance with which the festival was to conclude. The Aeronaut, unwearied by his voyage, pressed on amid the crowding multitude through the entrance of the Palace; advanced with clanking spurs, under the guidance of his trusty Lion, to the banquet-chamber; drew his sword, and cried: "With me, whoever stands by Duke Henry; and to traitors, death and hell!" The Lion also bellowed, as if seven thunders had been uttering their united voices; shook his awful mane, and furiously erected his tail, as the signal of attack. The cornets and kettle-drums struck silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of battle pealed from the tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic roof, till the walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook.

The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butterflies of courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as the thousand Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the sturdy fist of the son of Manoah; and he who escaped the sword, rushed into the Lion's throat, and was butchered like a defenceless lamb. When the forward wooer and his retinue of serving-men and nobles were abolished, Duke Henry, having used his household privilege as sternly as of old the wise Ulysses to the wooing-club of his chaste Penelope, sat down to table, refreshed in spirit, beside his wife, who was just beginning to recover from the deadly fright his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, he cast a glance of triumph on his new conquest, and perceived that she was bathed in ambiguous tears, which might as well refer to loss as to gain. However, like a man that knew the world, he explained them wholly to his own advantage; and merely reproving her in gentle words for the hurry of her heart, he from that hour entered upon all his former rights.

Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from the lips of his nurse; yet in riper years, as an enlightened sceptic, entertained doubts of its truth. But in the dreary loneliness of his Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired a form of possibility, and his wavering nursery belief increased almost to conviction. A transit through the air appeared to him the simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of Darkness, in the gloomy midnight, chose to lend his bat-wings for the purpose. Though in obedience to his religious principles, he no night neglected to cut a large cross before him as he went to sleep; yet a secret longing awoke in his heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to accomplish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse in the night-season happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he immediately supposed the Hellish Proteus was announcing his arrival, and at times in thought he went so far as settling the freight charges beforehand. But except the illusion of a dream, which juggled him into an aerial journey to his German native land, the Count gained nothing by his nursery faith, except employing with these fantasies a few vacant hours; and like a reader of novels, transporting himself into the situation of the acting hero. Why old Abaddon showed himself so sluggish in this case, when the kidnapping of a soul was in the wind, and in all likelihood the enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted for in two ways. Either the Count's Guardian Angel was more watchful than the one to whom Duke Henry had intrusted the keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly that the Evil One could get no advantage over him; or the Prince of the Air had grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his own element, having been bubbled out of his stipulated freightage by Duke Henry after all their engagements; for when it came to the point with Henry, his soul was found to have so many good works on her side of the account, that the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled by them.

Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few moments in the midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, his returning servants brought the Countess tidings that their master had vanished from the camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some supposed that he had been the prey of snakes or dragons; others that a pestilential blast of wind had met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be held _pro mortuo_, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that her lord was alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this thought, which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stoutest stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth; who returned after several years' cruising over sea and land; but no olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the land of the living: for she had a firm persuasion that so tender and true a husband could not possibly have left the world without in the catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at home, and giving them some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, there had nothing happened in the Castle; neither in the armoury by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret by a rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted its _Naenia_ down from the high battlements of the palace; nor had the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil omen, she inferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy, which even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's _Organum_ is among the male, that her much-loved husband was still living; a conclusion, which we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her first two missions of discovery, the object of which was more important to her than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter her from sending out a third Apostle into All the World. This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his mind the adage, _As soon gets the snail to his bed as the swallow_; therefore he called at every inn, and treated himself well. And it being infinitely more convenient that the people whom he was to question about his master should come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position where he could examine every passenger from the East, with the insolent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier; and fixed his quarters by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the Holy Land passed through in their way home. Whether this shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means for discharging his appointed function, will appear in the sequel.

After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Tower at Grand Cairo,--a term which to the Count seemed far longer than to the Seven Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Roman catacombs,--he concluded himself to be forsaken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, where the kind face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight struggled faintly in through a window secured with iron bars. His devil-romance was long ago concluded; and his faith in miraculous assistance from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated.

From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by the rattling of a bunch of keys, before the door of his cell. Since the day of his entrance, his jailor had never more performed for him the office of turnkey; for all the necessaries of the prisoner had been conveyed through a trap-board in the door. Accordingly, it was not without long resistance, and the bribery of a little vegetable oil, that the rusty bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of the iron hinges, as the door went up with reluctant grating, was to the Count a compound of more melodious notes than ever came from the Harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding palpitation of the heart set his stagnant blood in motion; and he expected with impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his fate: for the rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought life or death. Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at whose signal they loosed the fetters from the prisoner; and a second mute sign from the solemn graybeard commanded him to follow. He obeyed with faltering steps; his feet refused their service, and he needed the support of the two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. He was then conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking at him with a reproachful air, thus spoke: "Obstinate Frank, what made thee hide the craft thou art acquainted with, when thou wert put into the Grated Tower? One of thy fellow-prisoners has betrayed thee, and informed us that thou art a master in the art of gardening. Go, whither the will of the Sultan calls thee; lay out a garden in the manner of the Franks, and watch over it like the apple of thy eye; that the Flower of the World may blossom in it pleasantly, for the adorning of the East."

If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Rector of the Sorbonne, the appointment could not have astonished him more, than this of being gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. About gardening he understood as little as a laic about the secrets of the Church. In Italy, it is true, he had seen many gardens; and at Nuernberg, where the dawn of that art was now first penetrating into Germany, though the horticultural luxury of the Nuernbergers did not yet extend much farther than a bowling-green, and a few beds of roman lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the cultivation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never troubled his head; and his botanic science was so limited, that the Flower of the World had never once come under his inspection. Hence he knew not in the least by what method it was to be treated; whether like the aloe it must be brought to blossom by the aid of art, or like a common marigold by the genial virtue of nature alone. Nevertheless, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignorance, or decline the preferment offered him; being reasonably apprehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for the post, by a bastinading on the soles.