Part 16

Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is none more ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that of kidnapping the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such a masterstroke could only be imagined by the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,[25] nor could any but a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer difficulties; and as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into competition in this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count was infinitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie: nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of parties. The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with precious stones; changed her royal garment with a Kaftan; and one evening, under the safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire and the phlegmatic Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, unobserved, to enter on her far journey to the West. Her absence could not long remain concealed; her women sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost pin; and as she did not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became boundless. Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi; supposition and fact were strung together; and the whole produced, in sooth, no row of pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of the case. The Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence to the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Melechsala, everything considered, might have spared this pang, and avoided flying her country to make purchase of a glory, demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated lion, who shakes his brown mane with dreadful bellowing, when by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of the hounds, he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio, if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, in chase of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand oars were lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have taken a passage by water.

[25] J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the latter, of _Kakerlak_.--ED.

Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the Sultan was impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of rendering himself and his travelling party invisible; or the miraculous gift of smiting all Egypt with blindness. But of these talents neither had been lent him. Only the mettled Kurt had taken certain measures, which, in regard to their effect, might supply the place of miracles. He had rendered his flying caravan invisible, by the darkness of an unlighted cellar in the house of Adullam the sudorific Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not satisfy himself with practising the healing art to good advantage, but drew profit likewise from the gift which he had received by inheritance from his fathers; and thus honoured Mercury in all his three qualities, of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to Thieves. He drove a great trade in spiceries and herbs with the Venetians, from which he had acquired much wealth; and he disdained no branch of business whereby anything was to be made. This worthy Israelite, who for money and money's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from the casket of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count, whose rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three servants, to a Venetian ship that was loading at Alexandria; but it had prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck him somewhat; but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's. Ere long the report of the Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over all the city: then Adullam's eyes were opened; deadly terror took possession of his heart, so that his gray beard began to stir, and he wished with all his soul that his hands had been free of this perilous concern. But now it was too late; his own safety required him to summon all his cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. In the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, the hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal in seeking for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up in four bales of herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper invoice, under God's guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria; where so soon as the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, all and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb-sacks.[26]

[26] The invention of travelling in a sack was several times employed during the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf of Meissen (Misnia), returned from Palestine to his hereditary possessions, under this incognito, and so escaped the snares of the Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the productive mines of Freyberg.--M.

Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields and flaming swords, posted on a gorgeous train of clouds, did follow the swift ship, could not now, as they were invisible, be properly substantiated in a court of justice; yet there are not wanting symptoms in the matter which might lead to some such conjecture. All the four winds of Heaven seem to have combined to make the voyage prosperous; the adverse held their breath; and the favourable blew so gaily in the sails, that the vessel ploughed the soft-playing billows with the speed of an arrow. The friendly moon was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings in the harbour of his native town.

Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice; undismayed by the fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing his diets of examination, and diligently questioning all passengers from the Levant. He was at his post when the Count, with the fair Melechsala, came on land. His master's physiognomy was so stamped upon his memory, that he would have undertaken to discover it among a thousand unknown faces. Nevertheless the foreign garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven years produces many changes, made him for some moments doubtful. To be certain of his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made up to the trusty Squire, and asked him: "Comrade, whence come you?"

The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear the sound of his mother-tongue; but saw no profit in submitting his concerns to the questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly: "From sea."

"Who is the gentleman thou followest?"

"My master."

"From what country come you?"

"From the East."

"Whither are you going?"

"To the West."

"To what province?"

"To our home."

"Where is it?"

"Miles of road from this."

"What is thy name?"

"Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people call my sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat. Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child, and all my household."

"Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow."

"I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft."

"Answer me one question."

"Let us hear it."

"Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen, from the East?"

"Wherefore dost thou ask?"

"Therefore."

"Twiddle, twaddle! Wherefore, therefore!"

"Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess Ottilia his wife, to get her word whether her husband is still living, and in what corner of the Earth he may be found."

This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity; and tuned him to another key. "Wait a little, neighbour," said he; "perhaps my master knows about the thing." Thereupon he ran to the Count, and whispered the tidings in his ear. The feeling they awoke was complex; made up in equal proportions of joy and consternation. Count Ernst perceived that his dream, or the interpretation of it, had misled him; and that the conceit of marrying his fair travelling companion might easily be baulked. On the spur of the moment he knew not how he should get out of this embroiled affair: meanwhile, the desire to learn how matters stood at home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned to the emissary, whom he soon recognised for his old valet; and who wetted with joyful tears the hand of his recovered master, and told in many words what jubilee the Countess would make, when she received the happy message of her husband's return. The Count took him with the rest to the inn; and there engaged in earnest meditation on the singular state of his heart, and considered deeply what was to be done with his engagements to the fair Saracen. Without loss of time the watchful spy was dispatched to the Countess with a letter, containing a true statement of the Count's fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means of the Sultan's daughter; how she had abandoned throne and country for his sake, under the condition that he was to marry her, which he himself, deceived by a dream, had promised. By this narrative he meant not only to prepare his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights; but also endeavoured, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, to gain her own consent to the arrangement.

Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp eye recognised him in the distance; and he too being nothing of a blinkard,--a class of persons very rare in the days of the Crusades,--recognised the Countess also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it like a standard in token of good news; and the lady understood his signal, as well as if the Hanau _Synthematograph_ had been on duty there. "Hast thou found him, the husband of my heart?" cried she, as he approached. "Where lingers he, that I may rise and wipe the sweat from his brow, and let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome journeying?"--"Joy to you, my lady," said the post; "his lordship is well. I found him in the Port of Venice, from which he sends you this under his hand and seal, to announce his arrival himself." The Countess could not hastily enough undo the seal; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt as if the breath of life were coming back to her. Three times she pressed the letter to her beating heart, and three times touched it with her languishing lips. A shower of joyful tears streamed over the parchment, as she began reading: but the farther she read, the drops fell the slower; and before the reading was completed, the fountain of tears had dried up altogether.

The contents of the letter could not all interest the good lady equally; her husband's proposed partition treaty of his heart had not the happiness to meet with her approval. Greatly as the spirit of partition has acquired the upper hand nowadays, so that parted love and parted provinces have become the device of our century; these things were little to the taste of old times, when every heart had its own key, and a master-key that would open several was regarded as a scandalous thief-picklock. The intolerance of the Countess in this point was at least a proof of her unvarnished love: "Ah! that doleful Crusade," cried she, "is the cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which the Heathen have eaten; and nothing but a Crust of it returns to me." A vision of the night, however, soothed her troubled mind, and gave her whole view of the affair another aspect. She dreamed that there came two pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre up the winding Castle-road, and begged a lodging, which she kindly granted them. One of them threw off his cloak, and behold it was the Count her lord! She joyfully embraced him, and was in raptures at his return. The children too came in, and he clasped them in his paternal arms, pressed them to his heart, and praised their looks and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid aside his travelling pouch; drew from it golden chains and precious strings of jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the little ones, who showed delighted with these glittering presents. The Countess was herself surprised at this munificence, and asked the stranger who he was. He answered: "I am the Angel Raphael, the guide of the loving, and have brought thy husband to thee out of foreign lands." His pilgrim garments melted away; and a shining angel stood before her, in an azure robe, with two golden wings on his shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in the absence of an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream according to her best skill; and found so many points of similarity between the Angel Raphael and the Princess Melechsala, that she doubted not the latter had been shadowed forth to her in vision under the figure of the former. At the same time she took into consideration the fact that, without her help, the Count could scarcely ever have escaped from slavery. And as it behoves the owner of a lost piece of property to deal generously with the finder, who might have kept it all to himself, she no longer hesitated to resolve on the surrender. The water-bailiff, well rewarded for his watchfulness, was therefore dispatched forthwith back into Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for her husband to complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss of time.

The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at Rome would give his benediction to this matrimonial anomaly; and be persuaded, for the Count's sake, to refound, by the word of his mouth, the substance, form and essence of the Sacrament of Marriage. The pilgrimage accordingly set forth from Venice to Rome, where the Princess Melechsala solemnly abjured the Koran, and entered into the bosom of the Church. At this spiritual conquest the Holy Father testified as much delight as if the kingdom of Antichrist had been entirely destroyed, or reduced under subjection to the Romish chair; and after the baptism, on which occasion she had changed her Saracenic name for the more orthodox _Angelica_, he caused a pompous _Te-deum_ to be celebrated in St. Peter's. These happy aspects Count Ernst endeavoured to improve for his purpose, before the Pope's good-humour should evaporate. He brought his matrimonial concern to light without delay: but, alas! no sooner asked than rejected. The conscience of St. Peter's Vicar was so tender in this case, that he reckoned it a greater heresy to advocate triplicity in marriage than Tritheism itself. Many plausible arguments as the Count brought forward to accomplish an exception from the common rule in his own favour, they availed no jot in moving the exemplary Pope to wink with one eye of his conscience, and vouchsafe the petitioned dispensation: a result which cut Count Ernst to the heart. His sly counsel, the mettled Kurt, had in the mean time struck out a bright expedient for accomplishing the marriage of his master with the fair convert, to the satisfaction of the Pope and Christendom in general; only he had not risked disclosing it, lest it might cost him his master's favour. Yet at last he found his opportunity, and put the matter into words. "Dear master," said he, "do not vex yourself so much about the Pope's perverseness. If you cannot get round him on the one side, you must try him on the other: there are more roads to the wood than one. If the Holy Father has too tender a conscience to permit your taking two wives, then it is fair for you also to have a tender conscience, though you are no priest but a layman. Conscience is a cloak that covers every hole, and has withal the quality that it can be turned according to the wind: at present, when the wind is cross, you must put the cloak on the other shoulder. Examine whether you are not related to the Countess Ottilia within the prohibited degrees: if so, as will surely be the case, if you have a tender conscience, then the game is your own. Get a divorce; and who the deuce can hinder you from wedding the Princess then?"

The Count had listened to his Squire till the sense of his oration was completely before him; then he answered it with two words, shortly and clearly: "Peace, Dog!" In the same moment, the mettled Kurt found himself lying at full length without the door, and seeking for a tooth or two which had dropped from him in this rapid transit. "Ah! the precious tooth," cried he from without, "has been sacrificed to my faithful zeal!" This tooth monologue reminded the Count of his dream. "Ah! the cursed tooth," cried he from within, "which I dreamed of losing, has been the cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between self-reproaches for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for prohibited love to the charming Angelica, kept wavering like a bell, which yields a sound on both sides, when set in motion. Still more than the flame of his passion, the fire of indignation burnt and gnawed him, now that he saw the visible impossibility of ever keeping his word to the Princess, and taking her in wedlock. All which distresses, by the way, led him to the just experimental conclusion, that a parted heart is not the most desirable of things; and that the lover, in these circumstances, but too much resembles the Ass Baldwin between his two bundles of hay.

In such a melancholy posture of affairs, he lost his jovial humour altogether, and wore the aspect of an atrabiliar, whom in bad weather the atmosphere oppresses till the spleen is like to crush the soul out of his body. Princess Angelica observed that her lover's looks were no longer as yesterday, and ere-yesterday: it grieved her soft heart, and moved her to resolve on making trial whether she should not be more successful, if she took the dispensation business in her own hand. She requested audience of the conscientious Gregory; and appeared before him closely veiled, according to the fashion of her country. No Roman eye had yet seen her face, except the priest who baptised her. His Holiness received the new-born daughter of the Church with all suitable respect, offered her the palm of his right hand to kiss, and not his perfumed slipper. The fair stranger raised her veil a little to touch the sacred hand with her lips; then opened her mouth, and clothed her petition in a touching address. Yet this insinuation through the Papal ear seemed not sufficiently to know the interior organisation of the Head of the Church; for instead of taking the road to the heart, it passed through the other ear out into the air. Father Gregory expostulated long with the lovely supplicant; and imagined he had found a method for in some degree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, without offence to the ordinations of the Church: he proposed to her a spiritual wedlock, if she could resolve on a slight change of the veil, the Saracenic for the Nun's. This proposal suddenly awakened in the Princess such a horror at veils, that she directly tore away her own; sank full of despair before the holy footstool, and with uplifted hands and tearful eyes, conjured the venerable Father by his sacred slipper, not to do violence to her heart, and constrain her to bestow it elsewhere.

The sight of her beauty was more eloquent than her lips; it enraptured all present; and the tear which gathered in her heavenly eye fell like a burning drop of naphtha on the Holy Father's heart, and kindled the small fraction of earthly tinder that still lay hid there, and warmed it into sympathy for the petitioner. "Rise, beloved daughter," said he, "and weep not! What has been determined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. In three days thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to the Church can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be denied." Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casuists in Rome; had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed to each; and locked them up in the Rotunda, with the warning that no one of them should be let out again till the question had been determined unanimously. So long as the loaves and wine held out, the disputes were so violent, that all the Saints, had they been convened in the church, could not have argued with greater noise. But so soon as the Digestive Faculty began to have a voice in the meeting, he was listened to with the deepest attention, and happily he spoke in favour of the Count, who had got a sumptuous feast made ready for the entertainment of the casuistic Doctors, when the Papal seal should be removed from their door. The Bull of Dispensation was drawn out in proper form of law; in furtherance of which the fair Angelica had, not at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut upon the treasures of Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his benediction on the noble pair, and sent them away betrothed. They lost no time in leaving Peter's Patrimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate their nuptials on arriving.

When Count Ernst, on this side the Alps, again inhaled his native air, and felt it come soft and kindly round his heart, he mounted his steed; galloped forward, attended only by the heavy Groom, and left the Princess, under the escort of the mettled Kurt, to follow him by easy journeys.

His heart beat high within him, when he saw in azure distance the three towers of Gleichen. He meant to take his gentle Countess by surprise; but the news of his approach had preceded him, as on the wings of the wind; she went forth with man and maid, and met her husband a furlong from the Castle, in a pleasant green, which, in memory of this event, is called the Freudenthal, or Valley of Joy, to this day. The meeting on both sides was as trustful and tender, as if no partition treaty had ever been thought of: for Countess Ottilia was a proper pattern of the pious wife, that obeys without commentary the marriage precept of subjecting her will to the will of her husband. If at times there did arise some small sedition in her heart, she did not on the instant ring the alarm-bell; but she shut door and window, that no mortal eye might look in and see what passed; and then summoned the rebel Passion to the bar of Reason; gave it over in custody to Prudence, and imposed on herself a voluntary penance.

She could not pardon her heart for having murmured at the rival sun that was to shine beside her on the matrimonial horizon; and to expiate the offence, she had secretly commissioned a triple bedstead, with stout fir posts, painted green, the colour of Hope; and a round vaulted tester, in the form of a dome, adorned with winged puffy-cheeked heads of angels. On the silken coverlet, which lay for show over the downy quilts, was exhibited in fine embroidery, the Angel Raphael, as he had appeared to her in vision, beside the Count in pilgrim weeds. This speaking proof of her ready matrimonial complaisance affected her husband to the soul. He clasped her to his breast, and overpowered her with kisses, at the sight of this arrangement for the completion of his wedded joys.