The Mysteries of Florence

The doors were closed, the search commenced. Every nook was ransacked, every corner thrown open to the light, not even the bed of death, with its pillows of down and its hangings of purple, was spared.

While the search was in progress, the Countess of Albarone awoke from her swoon, and striding from the recess of an emblazoned window, where the Ladye Annabel remained glancing with a vacant look over the strange scene progressing in the Red Chamber, she was soon made aware of the fearful crime charged upon her son, the signet-ring and the terrible mystery.

“There is mystery,” she cried with a proud voice, “there is mystery, but—no dishonor!—Who can believe Adrian Di Albarone guilty of so accursed an act!”

“For one, I do not!” bluntly cried the stout yeoman.

“Nor I!” cried one of the servitors; and the cry went round the apartment,—

“Nor I”—“Nor I”—“He is guiltless.”

A shrill and prolonged shriek, echoing from a nook of the Red Chamber near the death-couch, sent a sudden thrill through the group assembled in this terrible mystery.

Every form wheeled suddenly round, every eye was fixed in the direction from whence issued the shriek, and the aged Steward of the Castle was seen, upholding with one trembling hand the folds of the gorgeous crimson tapestry, while his aged face grew livid as death, as he pointed with the other hand to a dark recess.

“A secret passage—the door cut into the solid wall is flung wide open—a robe laid across the threshold—a robe of crimson faced with gold.”

And as he spoke he flung the hangings yet farther aside, and the bright sunshine gleamed over the panel of the secret door, flung wide open; the crimson robe was thrown over the threshold, but no beam lighted up the gloom of the passage beyond.

The Lady of Albarone rushed hurriedly forward, she seized the robe, she held it aloft in the sunbeams, and—every eye beheld the robe of Adrian Di Albarone!

“Adrian!” shrieked the Countess, “Adrian of Albarone—yonder secret passage leads to thy sleeping chamber—thy departed sire, myself and thou, alone were aware of its existence. It has ever been a secret of our house. Tell me, by yon murdered corse, I implore thee, tell me who flung this door open, who laid thy robe across the threshold?”

Adrian passed his hand wildly over his forehead, and with a cry of horror fell insensible upon the floor.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

THE EMBRACE OF A BROTHER.

The sun was setting, calmly and solemnly setting, behind a gorgeous pile of rainbow-hued clouds, magnificent with airy castle and pinnacle, while the full warmth of his beams shone through the arching window of the Red Chamber, its casement panels thrown wide open, filling that place of death with light and splendor.

In the recess of the lofty casement, with the sunshine falling all around, and the shadow of her slender figure thrown like a belt of gloom over the mosaic floor, stood the Ladye Annabel, silent and motionless; her rounded arms half raised, with the slender hands crossed over her bosom, her robe of pale blue velvet, with the inner vest of undimmed white made radiant by the sunbeams; while, swept aside from her features, the golden hair fell with a floating motion down over her shoulders, and along the breast of snow.

And as she stood thus still and immovable, gazing with one unvarying glance along the courtyard, the sunshine revealed her face of beauty, every lineament and feature disclosed in the golden light, seeming more like the face of a dream-spirit, than the countenance of a mortal maiden. The soul shone from her face. The eyes full, large, and lustrous with their undimmed blue, dilating and enlarging with one wild glance; the cheek white as alabaster, yet tinted by the bloom, and swelled with the fullness of the budding rose; the lips small, and curvingly shaped, slightly parted, revealing a glimpse of the ivory teeth; the chin, with its dimple; the brow, with its clear surface, marked by the parted hair, waving aside like clustered sunbeams—such was the face of the Ladye Annabel, all vision, all loveliness, and soul.

“He is bound; yes, bound with the cord and thong! They gather around him with looks of insult; they place him on the steed; they move—oh, mother of Heaven!—they move toward the castle gate! And shall I never see him again—never, never? It is a dream; it is no reality. It is a dream! Was it a dream, yesterday, when he stood in this recess, his hand clasped in mine, his eyes calm and eloquent, gazing in mine, while his voice spoke of the sunset glories of the summer sky?”

One long, wild glance at the scene in the courtyard, and then veiling her eyes from the sight, she started wildly from the window.

“It is a dream,” murmured the Ladye Annabel, as she hurriedly glided from the room, and the echoes returned her whisper. “It is, it is a dream!”

Her footsteps had scarce ceased to echo along the ante-chamber, when another footstep was heard, and ere a moment passed, Aldarin stood in the recess of the lofty window of the Red Chamber. His face was agitated by strange and varying expressions, as with a keen and anxious eye he glanced over the spears and pennons of along line of men-at-arms, passing under the raised portcullis of the castle gate.

The portcullis was lowered with a thundering clang, the spears and pennons, the gallant steeds and their stalwart riders, were lost to sight, but presently came bursting into view again, beyond the castle gate, where the highway to Florence, appearing from amid surrounding woods, led up a steep and precipitous hill. And there, flashing with gold and glowing with embroidery, the broad banner of the Duke of Florence was borne in the van of the cavalcade. Then came four men-at-arms, in armor of blazing gold; and then, distinguished by his rich array, rode the Duke, mounted upon a snow-white charger, and behind him, environed by guards, his arms lashed behind his back, came Lord Adrian Di Albarone, accused of the most foul and atrocious murder of his sire. Beside her son, her face closely veiled, and her form bowed low, the Countess rode; and in the rear, their steeds gaily prancing, their spears flashing, and their pennons glancing in the sun, came the men-at-arms in long and gallant array.

With parted lips and strained eyes did Signior Aldarin watch the movements of this company.

As the steed of the last man-at-arms was lost in the shades of the forest, Aldarin smiled grimly, and, extended his shrivelled hand, shouted in tones of exultation:

“One hour ago, I was the stooping scholar,—The Signior Aldarin. Now!” full boldly did he swell that little word; “Now, I am the Count Aldarin Di Albarone, lord of the wide domains of Albarone!”

He laughed the short, husky laugh which was peculiar to him.

“Adrian swept from my path—and is he not already swept from my path?—that brainless idiot, my liege of Florence, swallowed the charge against that forward boy as greedily as the fish swallows the tempting bait; the signet and the robe will bring the changeling to the block, and thus, my only obstacle swept away, I, as next heir, succeed to the titles and estates of Albarone! And Annabel, my fair daughter! thy brow shall be decked with a coronet; thou shall reign Duchess of Florence! Ha—ha!”

And here, as the wide prospect of ambition opened to his mind’s eye, he became silent, and, hurriedly pacing the floor, resigned his soul to the dreams of his excited fancy.

Suddenly his visions were interrupted by a deep sigh, that seemed to proceed from the corse upon the couch.

Aldarin started, and for a moment stood still as a statue, his ear inclined toward the couch, as if intently listening; his lips apart, and his quivering hands stretched forth as though he would defend himself from some unreal foe.

At last, gaining courage, he approached the bed. There, without the slightest signs of animation, lay the faded form of the gallant warrior; the eyes closed, the stern expression of the features vanished, and the whole attitude that of unconscious repose.

Turning away, Aldarin was chiding himself for his childish terror, when a deep, sonorous groan met his ear. With a swelling heart he once more turned, and beheld a sight that caused the cold sweat of intense terror to ooze from his person, and every nerve to quake with alarm.

The eyes of the Count were wide open; a slight flush pervaded his cheeks, and his entire attitude was changed. A voice came from his pallid lips:

“Annabel, dearest Annabel! a fearful dream but now possessed my fancy! Methought I lay dead—dead, Annabel, dead; and that I died ere thy nuptials were solemnized—thy nuptials, Annabel, and thine Adrian!”

A fearful expression came over the scholar Aldarin’s features, as though he was stringing his mind to one great effort. In an instant his countenance became calm again, and approaching the bedside, he enquired, in a soft voice, if his dear brother wanted anything?

The Count answered hurriedly, as if a sudden light burst upon him:

“Ah! the Virgin save us! good Aldarin, art thou here? Surely, I saw Adrian and Annabel but a moment since? Surely—”

“Nay, my brother;” answered Aldarin, “’twas but mere phantasy. Annabel is not with us, nor is my Lord Adrian here; but I, dear brother, I am by your side.”

Speaking these words in a voice tremulous with affection, Signior Aldarin passed his left arm around the body of the Count, while the other enclosed his neck. He clasped him in an ardent embrace, as he continued:

“I am with you, dear brother; I will minister to your slightest wish; I, Aldarin, your own devoted friend.”

Here he inserted his right hand beneath the long gray locks of the Count, and clasping his neck, pressed him yet closer to his bosom.

“Kind Aldarin,” the Count began, but the sentence was cut short by a piercing cry, and the right hand of Aldarin clutched tighter and tighter around his brother’s throat.

“Nay, brother, thou shalt have rest, an’ thou wishest it,” cried Signor Aldarin. “There, sleep softly, and pleasant dreams attend you!”

The Count fell heavily upon the bed; his blood-shot eyes protruded from his blackened face, a livid circle was around his throat, and a thin line of blood trickled from his mouth. A sigh, heavy, deep, and prolonged came from his chest, and the murdered man ceased to live.

“The fiend be thanked!—it is done!”

Having thus spoken, in a voice that came through his clenched teeth, the murderer looked up and saw—the dogged, rough, yet honest visage of the stout yeoman peeping from among the curtains on the opposite side of the bed, his eyes steadily fixed on the corse, and a curious look of inquiry visible in every feature of his face.

The Signior drew back, trembling in every limb, and pale as death. It was a moment ere he recovered his speech, when, assuming a haughty air, he exclaimed:

“Slave, what do you here? Is it thus you intrude upon my privacy? Speak, sir—your excuse!”

The stout yeoman replied in his usual manners speaking in the Italian, but with a sharp English accent:

“Why, most worshipful Signior, you will please to bear in mind that for twenty long years have I followed my lord, he who now lies cold and senseless, to the wars. That withered arm have I seen bearing down upon the foe in the thickest of the fight; that sunken eye have I beheld glance with the stern look of command. By his side have I fought and bled; for him did I leave my own native land—merrie, merrie England,—and I will say, a more generous, true-hearted, and valiant knight, never wore spurs, or broke a lance, than my lord, the noble Count Julian Di Albarone.”

The yeoman passed the sleeve of his blue doublet across his eyes.

“Well sirrah,” cried the Signior, “to what tends all this?”

“Marry, to this does it tend: that wishing to behold that noble face yet once more, I stole silently to this chamber, thinking to be a little while alone with my brave lord. I did not discover your presence, till I looked through the curtains and saw—”

The stout Englishman suddenly stopped; there was a curious twitch in his left eye, and a grim smile upon his lip.

“Saw what, sirrah?” hurriedly asked the scholar Aldarin.

“Marry, I saw thee, worshipful Signior, in the act of embracing the Count; and such a warm, kind, brotherly embrace as it was! By St. Withold! it did me more good than a hundred of Father Antonio’s homilies—by my faith, it did!”

The thin visage of Aldarin became white as snow and red as crimson by turns. Making an effort to conceal his agitation, he replied:

“Well, well, Robin, thou art a good fellow after all, though, to be sure, thy manners are somewhat rough. I tell thee, brave yeoman, I have long had it in my mind to advance thy condition. Follow me to the Round Room, good Robin, where I will speak further to thee of this matter.”

“The Round Room!” murmured Robin, as he followed the scholar Aldarin from the Red Chamber. “Ha! ’tis the secret chamber o’ th’ scholar; many, many have been seen entering its confines—never a single man has been seen emerging from its narrow door, save the scholar Aldarin! I’ll beware the serpent’s pangs! I’ll drink no goblets o’ wine, touch no food or dainty viands while in this Round Room; or else, by St. Withold, Rough Robin’s place may be vacant in the hall, forever and a day!”

With these thoughts traversing his mind, the yeoman followed the scholar over the floor of the ante-chamber, and as they entered the confines of a gloomy corridor, a spectacle was visible, which, to say the least, was marked by curious and singular features.

Imagine the solemn scholar striding slowly along the corridor with measured and gliding footsteps, while behind him walks Robin the Rough, describing various eccentric figures in the air with his clenched hands; now brandishing them above the Signior’s head, now exhibiting a remarkable display of muscular vigor at the very back of Aldarin; and again, making a pass with all his strength apparently at the body of the alchymist, but in reality at the intangible atmosphere. These demonstrations did not appear to give the stout yeoman much pain, for his cheeks were very much agitated, and from his eyes were rolling thick, large tears of laughter.

The corridor terminated in a long, dark gallery hung with pictures colored by age, and framed in massive oak. Traversing this gallery, they ascended a staircase of stone, and passing along another corridor, terminated by a winding staircase. This, the scholar and the yeoman descended, and then came another gallery, another ascending stairway, and then various labyrinthine passages traversed, Rough Robin at last found himself standing side by side with Aldarin, in front of the dark panels of the narrow door leading into the Round Room.

This room was scarce ever visited by any living being in the castle save Aldarin, and strange legends concerning its mysterious secrets were current among the servitors of Albarone.

Many had been seen entering its confines with the Signior, but never was any one, save Aldarin, seen to emerge from its gloomy door.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

THE DEATH-TRAP.

ROBIN THE ROUGH IS ADVANCED TO HONOR, WHILE THE SKELETON-GOD LAUGHS OVER HIS SHOULDER.

The door flew suddenly open, and Robin, gazing around, found himself standing in a small room, circular in form, with an arched ceiling, and floor of stone. The walls were lined with shelves, piled with massive books, clasped by fastenings of silver and of gold, thrown among scrolls of parchment, richly illuminated, and emblazoned with strange figures, relieving pictures of dark and hidden meaning.

The apartment having no casement, light was supplied by a small lamp of curious workmanship, depending from the arched ceiling, and diffusing its intense and radiant beams all around the place, making the lonely room as bright as though the noonday sun shone over its shelves and walls.

Around the chamber were scattered strange instruments pertaining to the science of astrology or mysteries of alchemy; here richly emblazoned parchments, inscribed with curious characters, glittered in the light; and yonder, the ghastly skull, with its hideous grin of mockery, was strown along the floor, mingled with the bones of the human skeleton, the last fragments of the tenement of the living soul.

While Robin’s eyes distended in wonder, as he hastily glanced around the room, he stumbled and fell against an object reared in the centre of the floor.

“The foul fiend take thee, slave!” shouted Aldarin, as, with his extended arms, he stayed the soldier in his fall. “Wouldst thou destroy the labor of thrice seven long years? Wouldst thou destroy a Mighty Thought? Stand aside from the altar, and come not near it again, or by the body of * * *, I will brain thee with this dagger! Thou slave!” he shrieked, in tones of wild indignation, as his blazing eye was fixed upon the face of the yeoman, who stood confused and silent, “for what dost thou suppose I have watched yon beechen flame, by day and night, for twenty-one long years? For what have I wasted the youth and the vigor of my days before yon altar? Was it to have my labor, the mighty thought, for which I have dared what mortal never dared before, destroyed by thy clumsy carcass? Dost think so, slave?”

Rough Robin murmured an excuse for his awkwardness, and, while the Signior’s features subsided into their usual deep and solemn expression, he again gazed around the room.

From the centre of the oaken floor arose a small altar, built of snow-white marble, with a light blue flame arising from a vessel of gold on its surface: the fire sweeping along the sides of an alembic, suspended over the altar by four chains, attached to as many rods of gold placed at each corner of the structure.

There was something so strange and solemn in the entire aspect of the place—the light blue flame arising in tongues of fire from the vessel of gold on the snow-white altar, burning for ever beneath the hanging alembic, the chains and rods of gold, the pure and undimmed white of the marble, varied by no sculpturing or ornament, combined with the utter stillness and solitude of the room—that Robin felt awed, he scarce knew why; and dark forebodings crept like shadows over his brain.

The scholar seated himself upon a small stool placed near the other, and pointing to another, in a mild voice, desired Robin to follow his example. The yeoman hesitated.

“It is not meet for a poor yeoman o’ th’ Guard to rest himself in the presence of so great a scholar.”

“Nay, nay, good Robin, rest thyself. I was angered with thee a moment hence, but now it is all past. Seat thyself, brave yeoman.”

The soldier complied, and rested his stout person upon a stool of oak, placed some six feet from the spot where sat the Signior Aldarin. Robin had but time to note a singular circumstance, ere the scholar spoke. The stool upon which the stout yeoman sat, was firmly jointed in a large slab of red stone, which, spreading before him for the space of some six feet, was curiously fixed in the planks of the oaken floor.

With a mild and smiling look, the scholar spoke:—

“Robin, thou hast been a true and faithful vassal to my late brother. Thou didst right carefully attend Lord Julian, when forced by the incurable wound of a poisoned arrow, some three months since, he returned from Palestine, leaving Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Long-sword, at the head of his men-at-arms. Robin, I have long designed to testify the good opinion in which I hold thee by some substantial gift—thou shall be Seneschal of this mighty castle of Albarone!”

“Marry, good Signior—”

“How, sir!—dost thou address me as Signior? Vassal, I am the Lord of Albarone!”

“But Adrian—”

“What sayest thou of Adrian? A murderer—a parricide—his death is certain. The Duke of Florence hath sworn it.”

“Well, my Lord Count, then, an’ it pleases you better, I was about to say that if I had my choice I would sooner be made an esquire.”

“This thou shalt be:—first promise to serve me faithfully in all that I shall command.”

“Well, as far as an honest man may, so far do I promise.”

The scholar Aldarin mused a moment and then said carelessly—“Was it not an exceeding wicked deed, this murder of my good brother?”

“Aye, marry was it,” replied Robin, looking fixedly at Aldarin—“and the fiend of hell, himself, could not have done a more damned, or a more accursed thing.”

“True good Robin,—’twas a horrid murder. What could have prompted Adrian to raise his hand against his father, eh? good Robin?”

The Yeoman did not reply. He cast his eyes to the floor and confusedly fingered his cap.

The Count Aldarin—so must I style him—reached a folded parchment from a writing desk and then asked—

“Why dost thou not speak, good Robin? What art thinking of?”

“Why, heaven save your lordship,” said Robin, speaking in a whisper, and gazing full in Aldarin’s face, “I was just wondering whether the murderer embraced the Count ere he strangled him?”

Aldarin started aside—his features were writhen into a fearful contortion, and his whole frame shook like a leaf of the aspen tree. Again he turned his visage, it was calm, as the face of innocence, and a smile was on his pinched lip.

“Receive thy warrant as Seneschal of the Castle of Albarone,” said Aldarin, as he held forth the parchment—“nay, kneel not, good Robin; keep thy seat.”

Robin held forth his hand to reach the parchment—his fingers touched it, when Aldarin stamped his foot upon the floor, and the slab of red stone fell quick as lightning beneath the yeoman. A deep and dark well was discovered. In an instant the stool affixed to the stone was empty, and far below, in the depths of the pit the echo of the falling slab, sunk with a sound like the rushing of the winter wind through the corridors of a deserted mansion.

A face, with eyes rolling ghastly, with the lower jaw sunken and the tongue protruding from the mouth, appeared above the side of the cavity, at the very feet of Aldarin, and a muscular hand convulsively clutched the oaken plank, while the body of the stout Yeoman, was seen through the darkness of the pit, as he clung with the grasp of despair, to the floor of the room.

“Devil—” shouted the desperate soldier, as he made a convulsive effort to lighten the grasp of his hand on the smooth plank. “I’ll foil thee yet. ’Tis not the fate of an honest man to die thus! My doom—”

“Is DEATH!” shrieked the scholar, and drawing the glittering dagger from his robe, he smote the fingers of the Yeoman, with its unerring steel. The joints of the hand were severed.

The grasp of the soldier failed, he gave one dying look, and then far, far down in the pit, a whizzing noise like the sound of a falling body was heard, and as it grew fainter and fainter did Aldarin stand in attitude of listening, gazing down into the shadow void, his arms outstretched, his eyes wildly glaring, his lips apart, and every lineament of his face expressive of triumph, mingled with hate and scorn.

A wild, maniac laugh came from the murder’s lips:

“Ha—ha—ha! caitiff and slave! Thou hast met thy fate. The scholar hath enemies, but—ha—ha!—they all disappear!”

Again he cast his eyes into the well. All was still as death. A single look into the dark cavity, and, with his bitter smile, Aldarin pictured the mangled corse of the yeoman, lying in bloody fragments, strewn over the vaults of the castle, amid the corses of the unburied dead.

He stamped his foot on the floor, and the red slab, bearing the empty stool, slowly arose on its hinges, and was again fixed in the oaken planks.

“Silent forever, prying fool! My secret is safe. Thou shalt no more prate of a certain warm embrace. Nay, nay; now for my schemes. I must send on to Florence fresh proofs of Adrian’s guilt: witnesses, and so on, and so on. That matter arranged, then comes the marriage of Annabel and the Duke. Ha—ha! Let me think.”

Here he fell into a musing fit, and having newly fed the beechen flame upon the altar of marble, he approached a point of the Round Room, where a small knob of iron projected from the oaken floor.

Stamping upon the knob, a division of the shelving receded, and a portion of the wall, leaving an open space, while a passage was disclosed into a secret chamber, beyond the Round Room.

A door of dark and solid wood, painted in imitation of the walls of the Round Room, had been made in an aperture of the wall, with shelving placed on its panels, and every sign or mark of the existence of such a door, carefully and effectually erased. It bore a complete resemblance to the other parts of the walls, and no one, save Aldarin, could have dreamed of its existence. The small knob in the oaken floor, communicated with a spring, and the secret door rolled into the adjoining room on grooves fixed in the floor.

Aldarin stepped through the secret passage, the door rolled back, and the Round Room was left to the silent flame and the grinning skull.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

THE CHAMBER OF MYSTERIES.

A chamber with a low, dark ceiling, supported by massive rafters of oak; floor and wall of dark stone, unrelieved by wainscot or plaster—bare, rugged and destitute—in form, an oblong square, narrow in width, and extensive in length, with the impression of a coffin-like gloom and confinement, resting upon each dark stone and rugged rafter, while the air was insupportable with the scent of decaying mortality.

In the centre arose a rough table of massive oak, with a smoking light, burning in a vessel of iron, placed at each corner, flinging a dreary radiance through the darkness of the chamber.

The light threw its red and murky beams over the fearful burden of the table. It was piled with the unsightly forms of the dead. There were lifeless trunks, all hewn and hacked; there were discolored faces, green with decay; with the eyes scooped from the sockets, the livid skin dropping from the forehead, the jaw torn from its socket, and the brain, once the resting place of the mighty soul, protruding in all its discoloration and corruption over the bared brow; there were arms and limbs torn from the body, some yet wearing the hue of life, others rendered hideous and disgusting by the revel of the worm; there, in that lone room were piled up all these ghastly remains of humanity, these fearful mockeries of life, there rotting relics of what had once enthroned the GIANT SOUL.

The form of a muscular man, with chest of iron, and arms of brass, lay on the centre of the table, side by side with the figure of a fragile woman. The scanty locks of gray hair surmounted the half peeled forehead of the warrior, while the copious tresses of the woman drooped over the white cheek, the alabaster neck, and fell twining over the bosom, yet untainted by decay.

“Here,” cried Aldarin, with dilating eye—“Here, for twenty-one long years have I toiled. The sun shone over the beauty of spring, the luxury of summer, and yet I beheld him not. Autumn came with its decay, and winter with its cold, and yet Aldarin went not forth. Toil, toil, toil, while youth died in my veins, and age came wrinkling over my brow; toil, toil, toil, unceasing and eternal toil.

“Julian went to war, his plume waved over the ranks of battle. Aldarin toiled on, over the carcasses of the dead. Others have made friends among the living, and won honor from the great—it was mine to build a home amid the corses of the unburied dead, and to wring knowledge, wild and terrible, it is true, yet mighty knowledge, from the grasp of death. Toil, toil, toil, but not forever. It will come at last—the glorious secret.

“A few more weary days, a few more dreary nights, and the corse will speak, the alembic will give fort was! h the secret. The future speaks two words that fill my heart with fire—unbounded wealth—Immortal life!”

He looked around with a blazing eye and extended arm—“They rise before me, the host of victims—ghastly with the dead hue, gory with blood they rise, they raise their hands, and shriek my name? And yet, it was to be, it was to be, and it was! And he, the last, the most dread and fearful sacrifice—oh, Fiend, wring not my heart with throes of intolerable torture nor point to yon wan and pallid form! I tell thee when the last secret shall have been wrung from the lips of Death, then, then, he, aye, he may, may——”

He paused, he drooped his head low on his breast, a scarcely audible murmur broke from his lips. Two phrases of doubtful purport might alone be heard——

“Live again—” and then the murmur—“mighty secret——from his body—”

Aldarin turned from his dread and mystic reveries, he seized the scalpel, he commenced the work of knowledge, among the carcasses of the dead. Long he labored, and eagerly he toiled, but at last, as the solemn hours of the night wore on, he slept and dreamed a dream. Prostrate among the bodies of the dead, his arms flung carelessly on either side over the torn and mangled faces, Aldarin slept and dreamed.

And this was the Dream OF Aldarin the Fratricide.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

THE DREAM OF THE DAMNED.

He stood upon a lonely isle. His feet were tortured by the sensation of burning, he looked beneath in wonder, and discovered that he stood upon a rock of fire.

He looked around—he beheld an ocean of fire; as far as eye could see, nothing met his vision but the waves of crimson flame, undulating to and fro, with a gentle, yet solemn motion.

Had the waves arisen around him, in giant billows, or swept above in mountains of liquid flame, the dreamer would have rejoiced, his spirit would have joined in the tumult, his soul become the incarnation of the storm.

But that strange calmness of the waves, that quiet undulation, awed him, chilled him to the heart. He looked again over the shoreless sea, and saw with straining eyes a sight of woe—unutterable woe.

From the surface of every wave, from the waves breaking in spiral flames at his feet—afar and near, on every side—from the surface of every wave was thrust a discolored face, with burning eyes, that gleamed with a strange life, while the lips were colorless, the cheeks livid, and the brow green with decay. As the Dreamer looked, low, faint murmurs, unutterable sighs and sobs, broke on the air, and a hollow whisper, more like the echo of a thought than a sound, came to his ear—THESE ARE THE FACES OF THE DAMNED—every face you see, is the face of a Lost-soul—THESE ARE THE FACES OF THE DAMNED.

Aldarin turned from side to side with a horror he had never felt before. All around seemed turning to fire, fire in every shape and form, fire intangible and fire incarnate. Above, no sky with Sun of Glory gave light to that ocean of flame, with the faces of the damned, thrust from every billow. A roof of brass, vast and awful, and magnificent, arched over the waves of fire; it was heated to a burning heat, and the eye of Aldarin seemed turning to flame, as he looked upon the brazen sky.

The horizon of this fearful sky, was concealed by great clouds, rolling slowly on, and on, and on, over the waves of fire, far, far, from the isle where stood Aldarin.

And while the hollow murmur broke over the scene, and the whispering of subdued voices, and the sobs of soft voiced women, shrieking that unutterable wail, Aldarin felt the very air burn into his flesh hotter, and more torturing than the air of the simoon, he felt the rock beneath him turning molted fire, his feet were crumbling into fragments, while agony and intense pain, quivered along his veins, and the flame lapped up his blood. He burned, and yet—he burned not.

The air penetrated into his flesh, entered the pores, burning along his veins; he felt the fire at his very heart; he drank in the flame with every breath, and yet—he burned not.

No sooner did his feet crumble with the agonizing influence of the fire, than another portion of his frame, seemed renewing its life, his heart became young, and his brain flowed with healthy blood.

Again his feet renewed their flesh, and then, with a hollow voice, he shrieked, mingling in that unutterable wail of the damned, “I burn, I burn, my heart is on fire, my brain is turned to flame, and yet I am not consumed.”

A sudden change in the shape of the islet on which he stood, attracted his attention. At first wide and extensive in form, it was now narrow and contracted. Every moment it grew smaller, and yet smaller, and the waves of fire came rolling wave after wave over its surface. Aldarin started with a new and strange horror. Terrible it was to stand on the rock of fire, his feet consuming, his brain on fire, his heart a flame; air, sky and ocean, all burning into his very soul, terrible, most terrible, but those hollow murmurs, those fearful whispers of the damned came breaking on his ear, speaking of mysteries, yet more terrible, in the Vast Beyond.

The wretched man clung to the rock. Oh! God, how fearful was the first touch of the waves of molten flame; how the liquid fire ate into his flesh and corrupted his blood, as the spiral flames cresting, each wave came hissing and curling round his limbs!

The waves rose higher and higher; the bodies of the lost, offensive with decay, the loathsome, and worm-eaten came floating around Aldarin. He raised his hands, he pushed the ghastly carcasses aside, but still they came floating on, and on, throwing their crumbling arms around his neck and fixing their livid lips upon his burning cheek, in the kiss of the damned.

They hailed him—brother—with a hollow welcome, and as innumerable voices whispered forth the sound of awful welcome, Aldarin missed his footing on the rock, he felt his form changing with decay, he raised his hands in the effort to keep on the surface of the waves, and saw his fingers with the flesh dropping from the bones; he floated on the surface of the boundless sea, he became one of the damned.

Forever and forever lost.

They were floating on and on, the boundless legion of the lost, and with them floated Aldarin.

A strange distant sound burst on the ear, he heard it grow louder and louder, now it was like the roaring of a mighty ocean, now it was like the hissing of a thousand furnaces.

Floating on the waves of fire, crowded by legion of the lost, Aldarin turned with a feeling of intense awe, and murmured the question—“What means yon sound of terror—yon murmur of fear?”

“We are floating on and on, toward the Cataract of Hell—” was the hoarse murmur of the living corse floating by his side, and a million tongues, speaking from livid lips returned the echo—“On and on toward the Cataract of Hell!”

Aldarin was carried on without the power of resistance, with no object to stay his career, on and on, every moment nearing the fearful Cataract, whose omnipresent thunder now deafened his ears, and fell upon his very brain, like the awful echo of an unrelenting Judgment.

Then came a pause of strange unconsciousness, from which Aldarin presently awoke; and opening his eyes, gazed around.

He hung on the verge of a rock, a rock of melting bitumen, that burned his hands to masses of crisped and blackened flesh as he hung. The rock flung its projecting form over a gulf, to which the cataracts of earth might compare, as the rivulet to the vast ocean.

It seemed to Aldarin as though the universe, with all the boundless fields of space, was comprised in the sweep of that awful cataract with its rocks of bitumen and red-hot ore extending for miles and miles innumerable, on either side, with the waves of fire—each wave bearing its awful burden of a damned soul—surging and foaming over the edge of the precipice, while a hissing and crackling sound, like the noise of ten thousand forests, ravaged by flame, startled the very air of hell, and mingled with the shrieks of the ******.

Aldarin looked below.

God of Heaven, what a sight! A gulf, like the space occupied by a thousand worlds—deep, vast, immense, and yet perceptible to the eye—sunk beneath him, with its surface of fiery waves, all convulsed and foaming with innumerable whirlpools, all crimsoned by bubbles of flame, each whirlpool swallowing the millions of the lost, each bubble bearing on its surface the face of a soul, damned and damned forever. Forever and forever.

And as the lost were borne on by the waves and swallowed by the whirlpools, they raised their hands and cast their burning eyes to the brazen sky, and shrieked, with low and muttering voices, the eternal death-wail of the lost.

Over the cataract, shrieking and wailing, were precipitated the millions and ten thousand millions of living-dead; each one swelling that unutterable murmur as he fell, each soul yelling with a more intense horror as it sank into night and all around, innumerable echoes bursting from the rocks or bitumen and melting ore breaking from the very air gave back the shriek, the wail and murmur of the lost. Forever and forever lost.

And over this scene, awful and vast, towered a figure of ebony darkness; his blackened brow concealed in the clouds, his extended arms grasping the infinitude of the cataract, while his feet rested upon islands of bitumen far in the gulf below.

The eyes of the figure were fixed upon Aldarin, as he clung with the nervous grasp of despair, to the rock of melting bitumen, and their gaze curdled his heated blood.

Every moment he was losing his grasp, sliding and sliding from the rock, now his feet were loosened and hung dangling over the gulf.

There was no hope for him, he must fall—fall, and fall forever.

At this moment, when his burning hands clung to the rock, when his feet were dangling in the air, when his blood-shot eyes, protruding from their sockets, glared ghastily above, a new wonder attracted the gaze of Aldarin.

A stairway, built of white marble, wide, roomy, and secure, seemed to spring from the very rock to which he clung, and winding up from the cataract, encircled by white and rainbow-hued clouds, was lost in the distance, far, far above.

Aldarin beheld two figures slowly descending the stairway from the distance—the figure of a warrior and the form of a dark-eyed woman.

As they drew near and nearer, he felt a strange feeling of awe gathering round his heart.

He knew the figures, he knew them well.

Her face of beauty wore a smile, her dark eyes were brilliant as ever, brilliant as when first he wooed and won her in the wilds of Palestine. Yet there was blood upon her vestments near the heart; and his lip was spotted with one drop of thick red blood.

It was most fearful to see them thus calmly approach; it was most terrible to recognize every line of their features, every part of their vestments.

“This,” muttered Aldarin, “this indeed, is Hell.—And yet he must call for aid, and call to the warrior and the woman. How the thought writhed like a serpent round his very heart!”

He was sliding from the rock, slowly, yet certainly sliding. Another moment and he would plunge below. There was but one hope. He might, by a desperate effort, drag his carcass along the pointed rock: by a single extension of his arm, his hand would grasp the lowest step of the stairway.

He prepared himself for the effort, his feet hung dangling below, it is true, and his body was gradually slipping, but he gathered all the strength of his living corse for that single effort.

Slowly he passed his hand along the rock of bitumen, clutching the red-hot masses of ore in the action, and with his heart all aflame, he supported his trembling carcass with the other hand, and passed the extended hand yet farther along the rock.

It wanted but a single inch, a little inch, and his hand would grasp the marble of the stairway. And, yet that inch he could not compass with the hand so nervously outstretched, all his strength had been expended in the effort, and there he hung trembling on the verge of the abyss, when had he but the additional vigor of a mere child, he might grasp the stairway—he might be saved.

Another and a desperate effort! His fingers touched the carved marble-work of the stair-way, but his strength was gone—he could not hold it in his grasp.

With an eye of horrible intensity he looked above him, ere he made the last effort. The figures stood before him on the second step of the stairway. The woman, beautiful and bright-eyed, smiled, and the stern warrior shared her smile.

“Thou, thou wilt save me Ilmerine—my wife, my love, thou wilt—drag—drag—my hand to thee, and I can reach the staircase.”

She stooped, the beautiful woman, she reached forth a fair and lily hand, she grasped the blackened fingers of Aldarin.

“Thanks, beautiful Ilmerine. I have wronged thee, but—the SECRET—a little nearer—drag—drag my hand—a moment—and I will grasp the staircase—I will be saved.”

She placed his fingers round a projecting ornament of the staircase, his grasp was tight and desperate.

“Ascend!” she cried in a sweet and soft-toned voice.

“Julian—oh, Julian—grasp this hand—aid me, oh Julian my brother!”

The figure of the Warrior slowly stooped and seized the other hand, and drawing it towards the staircase, wound the fingers round another piece of the carved work of the staircase.

“Ascend, Aldarin, brother of mine, ascend!” cried his deep toned and awful voice.

“Ascend, brother of mine, I would, but my strength fails—seize me, by the body, and drag me from this rock of terror—oh, seize me.”

The Warrior seized Aldarin by the shoulder, and dragged him slowly along the rock, but the flesh he clenched, crumbled in his grasp. Aldarin again trembled over the verge of the abyss—the blow of a single straw, might suffice to hurl him into the world below.

“Julian my brother. Ilmerine my wife, save me—oh, save me!”

The woman, dark-haired and beautiful, stooped, she slowly unwound the fingers of Aldarin from the ornament of the staircase. And as she unwound finger after finger, she looked upon his horror-stricken face and smiled, and pointed to the red-wound near her heart. He returned her smile with a ghastly grimace, he looked to the Warrior, and tightened the grasp of his other hand.

“Thou Julian, wilt save me—thou wilt not unwind my fingers, thou wilt hurl this beautiful demon aside.”

“Aldarin my brother!” said the Figure in a voice of awe, as kneeling on the lowest step of the staircase, he cast the glance of his full and burning eyes upon the livid visage of Aldarin, while for a moment he wound the folds of his robe yet closer around his warrior-form.—“Aldarin, my brother, I will save thee.”

He smiled—Aldarin returned his smile.

“Reach me thy hand, Julian, thy hand, or I perish.”

The Warrior slowly reached forth his hand, from beneath the folds of his cloak, he held it before the face of Aldarin, and the eyes of the doomed man saw that the fingers clenched a Goblet of Gold, that shone and glimmered thro’ the air, like a beacon-fire of hell.

“Oh—Fiend—the Death-bowl!”

As these words shrieked from Aldarin’s livid lips, he drew back from the maddening sight, with horror, he missed his hold, he slid from the rock—HE FELL.

A thousand fires burned before his eyes, ten thousand horrid sounds fell on his very brain, serpents loathsome and noxious crawled thro’ his hair, all around, above and beneath was fire, waves of flame eating into his soul, sky of brass, burning his eyes from their sockets, all was fire and horror and death, and—still he fell.

And a hoarse hollow voice, rising above the murmurs of the damned, spoke forth the words—“Forever and Forever—” and all hell gave back the echo—“Ever, Ever, Ever!”

Still he fell! The whirlpool sucked him within its circles of flame, around and around he dashed, with the bodies of the living dead floating over him, with ghastly faces, upturned to his vision, with foul arms, clenching him in a loathsome embrace, around and around he dashed, joining in the low, deep murmur of the damned, and his heart gave back the murmur. This, This, is hell!

Suddenly all was dark. Aldarin heard no sound, no murmur of the lost. All was dark, all was still. He touched his brow, and was amazed to find it untortured by flame. Yet big beaded drops of sweat stood from his forehead, his frame was chilled, a feeling of unutterable AWE was upon him, he feared to stir. He had been dreaming. His dream was past, his consciousness gradually returned, he found himself reclining among the foul remnants of decay, amid the carcasses of the dead.

He drooped his head low on his bosom, his face rested on his knees, his arms were folded across his eyes, and there in that lone chamber, while the silent hours of the night wore on, with his own weird soul, communed Aldarin the Fratricide.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

THE CELL OF THE DOOMED.

THE DOOMSMAN.

“He dies at daybreak—ha, ha, ha—he dies by the wheel.”

And as he laughed, the man-at-arms, Hugo, let fall the end of his pike upon the dark pavement, and the sound echoed along the gloom of the gallery, like thunder, every arch repeating the echo, and every nook and corner of the obscure passage taking up the sound, until, an indistinct murmur swelled from all sides, and the voices of the Invisible seemed whispering from the old and blood-stained walls.

“He dies at daybreak! Right, Hugo—the Goblet and the Ring, sent him to the doomsman!”

“And I—I—the Doomsman will have his blood! How looked he, good Balvardo, when the sentence of the Duke rang thro’ the hall—“Death, Death to the Parricide?” Quailed he or begged for mercy!”

“Quail? ‘Slife I’ve seen the eye of the dying war-horse, when the poisoned arrow was in his heart, and the death-cry of his master in his ears, but the mad glare of his eye never thrilled me, like the deep glance of this—murderer! Blood of the Turk, his eye burned like a coal!”

“Tell me, tell me, how was the murder fixed upon him? Who laid it to his hands?”

“Blood o’ th’ Turk! Must thou know everything. Then go ask the gossips, at the corners of the streets, and hear them tell in frightened murmurs, how the Poisoned Bowl was found on the beaufet, how the Signet-Ring was found in the bowl, how the Robe was thrown over the secret threshold, and—ha, ha, how one Balvardo swore to certain words uttered by the—Parricide, wishes for the old lord’s death, hopes of hot-brained youth, and mysterious whispers about that Ring, and—”

“How one Hugo—ha, ha,—swore to his guilt in like manner. Faith did I—how I met the young Lord, in the southern corridor about high noon, how he turned pale when I told him, with every mark of respect, be sure, that he had forgotten his crimson robe, and—”

“So ye gave him to the Doomsman?” shrieked the executioner, as his thick-set hump-backed figure was disclosed in the solitary light, hanging from the ceiling of the gallery—“So ye gave him—Lord Adrian—to me, to the pincers and the knife, to the hot lead, and the wheel of torture! You are brave fellows—ha, ha, he dies at daybreak—and the Doomsman thanks ye!”

The two sentinels watching in the Gaol of Florence, besides the gloomy door of the Doomed Cell, started with a sudden thrill of fear, as they looked upon the distorted form, and hideous face, of the wretch who stood laughing and chattering before their eyes.

Balvardo drew his stout form to its full height, and bent the darkness of his beetle-brows, upon the deformed Doomsman, and Hugo, clad in armor of shining steel, like his comrade, started nervously aside, as his squinting eyes were fixed upon the distorted face, the wide mouth, opening with a hideous grin, the retreating brow and the large, vacant, yet flashing eyes, that marked the visage of the Executioner of Florence. A dress made of coarsest serge, hung rather than fitted around his deformed figure, while a long-bladed knife, with handle of unshapen bone, glittered in the belt of dark leather that girdled his body.

“Sir Doomsman, thou art merry—” growled Balvardo—“Choose other scenes for thy merry humor—this dark corridor, with shadows of gloom in the distance, and the flickering light of yon smoking cresset, making the old walls yet more gloomy, around us, is no place for thy magpie laugh. No more such sounds of grave-yard merriment or—we quarrel, mark ye.”

“We quarrel, mark ye!” echoed the sinister-eyed Hugo, gravely dropping the end of his pike on the pavement.

“St. Judas! My brave men of mettle are wondrous fiery, this quiet night! Ha—ha—pardon Sir Balvardo, I meant not to anger ye! Yet dost thou know that it makes my veins fill with new blood! and my heart warm with a strange fire.”

“Thy veins fill with new blood! Ha—ha—ha!—Did’st ever hear of a withered vine, blackened by flame, bearing ripe grapes, or was ever a dead toad perfumed by the south wind? Hugo, his heart warms with a strange fire? Odor o’ pitch and brimstone, what a fancy! Ha—ha—”

“Nay, nay, Balvardo. There is some life in the Doomsman’s veins. Don’t doubt it? Just fancy those talons, which he calls fingers, clutched round thy throat—W-h-e-w!”

“I say it makes my veins fill with new blood, my heart warm with a strange fire—this matchless picture! A gallant Lord, with the warm flush of youth on his cheek, strength in his limbs and fire in his heart, stretched out upon the wheel—here a hand is corded to the wheel, and there another, here a foot is bound to the spokes and there another. He looks like the cross of Saint Andrew—by St. Judas. A merry fancy—eh! Balvardo? Stretched out upon the wheel, he looks with his bloodshot eyes to the heavens. See’s he any hope there? Laid on his back, he casts his last long glance aside over the multitude—the vile mob. See’s he a face of pity there! Hears he a voice of mercy? None—none! Earth curses, heaven forsakes, hell yawns! And he is of noble blood, and on his brow there sits the frown of a lofty line. While the mob hoot, the victim holds his breath, and I—I the Doomsman approach!”

“God’s death—he makes my blood chill!” muttered Hugo, glancing askance at his comrade, who stood silent biting his compressed lip.

“He writhes, for the hissing of the cauldron of hot lead falls on his ear, he feels his flesh creep, for the red hot glare of the blazing iron with its jagged point blinds his eyes as he gazes! He utters no moan—but he hears the beating of his own heart.

“He hears a step—a low and cat-like step—’tis mine, the Doomsman’s step. The red-hot iron in one hand, the ladle filled with melted lead, hot and seething lead in the other, nay, start not, nor wince, good Balvardo—’tis no fancy picture.”

“The Fiend take thy words—they burn my heart! Hold or by thy master, the devil, I’ll strike ye to the floor!

“Hark—hear you that hissing sound? His muscular chest is bared to the light, these talon-hands guide the red-hot iron over the warm flesh, with the blood blackening as it oozes from the veins. He writhes—but utters no groan. Now lay down the iron and the lead; seize the knotted club, aloft it whirls, it descends! D’ye see the broken arm bone, protruding from the flesh? Hurl it aloft again, nor heed the sudden struggle and the quick convulsive agony, never heed them—all writhe and struggle so. It grows exciting, Balvardo, it warms me, Hugo.”

Hugo muttered a half-forced syllable, but his parted lips and absent manner, attested his unwilling interest in the words of the Doomsman, while Balvardo, clutching his pike, strode hurriedly to and fro along the floor of stone.

“Again the Doomsman sweeps the club aloft! Crash—crash—crash, and then a sound, not a groan, not a groan, but a howl, a howl of agony!

“Look, Balvardo, look Hugo, you can count the bones as they stick out from each leg, from each arm, from the wrist and from the shoulder, from the ancle and the thigh, never mind the blood—it streams in a torrent from each limb, be sure, but the hot iron dries it up. Your melted lead is good for cautery—it heals—ha, ha, ha, let me laugh—it heals the wound, each blow the club had made. The picture grows—it deepens.”

“Now, by the Heaven above, I see it all—” muttered Balvardo with a dilating eye, as his manner suddenly changed, and he leaned forward with unwilling yet absorbing interest. “This is no man, but a devil’s body with a devil’s soul!”

“His face is yet unscarred—unmoved save by the wrinkling contortions of pain. The mob hoot, and hiss, and yell—the play must deepen. Hand me the iron—red-hot—and hissing—give me the bowl of melted lead, dipped from the boiling cauldron. The Doomsman’s step again!

“The victim’s body creeps, and writhes in every sinew, his veins seem crawling thro’ his carcass, his nerves, turned to things of incarnate pain, are drawn and stretched to the utmost.”

“Look well upon the blue heavens, Parricide, for the red-hot iron is pointed, and—ha, ha, how he howls—it nears your eyes, it glares before them in their last glance. It must be done, why howl you so? Does it burn your eyes, tho’ it touches them not? Ha, ha—I meant it thus.”

“Balvardo, strike him down. He is not human—see his flashing eyes, his arms thrown wildly aside, with the talon-fingers, grasping the air!”

“H-i-s-s—it touches the eyeball, the eye is dark forever! H-i-s-s it licks up the blood, it turns round and round in the socket. Now fill the hollow socket with the lead, the hissing lead—and, ha, ha, now bring me another iron pointed like this, and heated to a white heat. Quick, quick, the victim groans, howls, writhes, and yells! Quick! Ah, ha, let the iron touch the skin of the eyeball, it shrivels like a burnt leaf, deeper sink the hissing point, turn it round and round, let it lap up the gushing blood. Now the lead, the thick and boiling lead, pour it from the ladle, fill the socket, it hardens, it grows cold—ha, ha, ha, behold the eyes of lead.”

“I see them!” faltered Hugo, trembling in his iron armor.

“And I,” echoed Balvardo—“I see them, oh, horrible, and ghastly, I—I—see the eyes of lead!”

“Quick, quick—why lag ye, man? Quick—quick, I say! The knife, the glittering knife. The Parricide howls not nor groans, but his soul is trampling on the fragments of clay. Quick, while his carcass is all palpitation, all alive with torture, all throe, all agony and pulsation, hand me the knife. I would cut his beating heart from the body.”

“There, there—the flesh, severed to the bone, parts on either side—the ribs are bared—a blow with the jagged club, and they are broken. This hand is thrust within the aperture, I feel the hot blood, I feel his heart. It beats, it throbs, it writhes in my grasp, like a dying bird beneath the hunter’s hand.”

“Quick—the knife again—I hold the heart, cut it from the carcass, sever each nerve, snap each artery. A deep, low, trembling heave of the chest; a rattle in the throat.

“I raise the heart,—still quivering on high, it gleams in the light of day, and its warm blood-drops fall pattering on the face of the felon.”

“The mob shout their curses and hoot their oaths of scorn.”

“Quick, the pincers, the red-hot pincers—but hold—that shaking of the chest, that last heave of the trunk, that quivering in every splintered limb, with that quick tremor of the lip, ha, ha, that blanching of the cheek, with the blood oozing from every pore, that thick gurgling sound in the throat, he dies, the Felon dies, the Doomsman laughs, and from the shattered clod, creeps the Spirit of the Parricide!”

Hugo turned his face to the wall, and covered his eyes with his upraised hands. Balvardo stood still as death, gazing on the vacant air with a wild glance, as though he saw the Spirit of the dead. Neither moved nor said a word. The maniac wildness of the Doomsman awed and chilled them to the heart.

“This is the fate, to which ye have given him; this proud Lord now sleeping in the Chamber of the Doomed—to me, the Doomsman, to the wheel, to the knotted club, to the knife, the hot iron, and the melted lead, to the dishonor ye have given him! Ha—ha—ha—these hands itch for his blood. To-morrow’s rising sun will gleam on the scene, this merry scene—The Doom of the Poisoner.”

The Sentinels heard a hurried footstep, followed by a closing door, the Doomsman had disappeared. They turned with looks of horror, of remorse, mingled with all the fear and torture that the human soul can feel, stamped in their faces, while from one to the other broke the whisper—

“He sleeps within yon cell—the Doomsman’s cell, till the first glimpse of the morrow morn shall rouse him to this work—this work of horror and of—Doom.”[1]

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

ADRIAN THE DOOMED.

The wierd and mystic spirit that rules this chronicle, throws open to your view the cell of the Doomed.

It is a sad and gloomy place, where every dark stone has its tale of blood, every name, rudely scratched on the damp wall, its legend of despair.

All is silent; not a whisper, not a sob, not a sound. The silence is so breathless that you fear the spirits of the condemned, who passed from this chamber to the Wheel and the Block, may start into life—at the echo of a footstep from the dark corners of the room, and appal your eye with their shapes of horror.

The cresset of iron fixed to the rough wall, threw a dim light over the form of the Doomed, as seated upon a rough bench, with his head drooped between his clenched hands, his elbows resting on his knees, his golden hair faded to a dingy brown, falling over his shoulders and hiding his countenance, he mused with the secrets of his heart, and called up before his soul the mighty panorama of despair—the wheel, the block, the doomsman, and the multitude.

Adrian the Doomed raised his form from the oaken bench, and paced the dungeon floor. He was not shackled by manacles or clogged by chains.

It was the last night of his existence; escape came not within his thoughts, the walls were built of rock; hundreds of armed sentinels paced the long galleries of the prison, and a guard of two men-at-arms watched without the triple-locked and triple-bolted door of the Doomed chamber.

Suffering and endurance, anxiety of mind and torture of soul, had wrought fearful changes in the well knit and muscular form of the Lord of Albarone.

His countenance was pale and thin; his lips whitened, his cheeks hollow and his eyes sunken, while his faded locks of gold fell in tangled masses over his face and shoulders. His blue eye was sunken, yet it gleamed brighter than ever, and there was meaning in its quick, fiery glance.

“To die on the gibbet, with the taunt and the sneer of the idiot crowd ringing in my ears, my last look met with the vulgar grimaces and unmeaning laughter of ten thousand clownish faces—to die on the rack, each bone splintered by the instruments of ignominious torture, my scarred and mangled carcass mocking the face of day,—oh, God—is this the fate of Adrian, heir to the fame, the glory, and the fortunes of the house of Albarone?”

Pausing in his hurried walk, he stood for a moment silent and motionless as the sculptured marble, and then eagerly stretching forth his hands, cried—

“Father—father! noble father! I believe thy holy shade is now hovering unseen over the form of thy doomed son—by all the hopes men hold of bliss in an unknown state of being; by the faith which teaches the belief of a future world, I implore thee, appear and speak to me. Tell me of that eternity which I am about to face! Tell me of that awful world which is beyond the present! Father, I implore thee, speak!”

His imagination, almost excited to phrenzy by long and solitary thought, with glaring eyes, arms outstretched, and trembling hands, the agitated boy gazed at a dark corner of the cell, every instant expecting to behold the dim and ghostly form of his murdered sire slowly arise and become visible through the misty darkness. No answer came—no form arose. Adrian drew a dagger from his vest.

“Father, by the mysterious tie that binds the parent to the son, which neither time nor space can sever—death or eternity annihilate—I implore thee—appear!”

The tone in which he spoke was dread and solemn. Again he waited for a response to his adjuration, but no response came.

“This, then,” cried Adrian, raising the dagger; “this, then, is the only resource left to me. Thus do I cheat the mob of their show; thus do I rescue the name of Albarone from foul dishonor!”

Tighter he clutched the dagger; his arms was thrown back and his breast was bared; and, as he thus nerved himself for the final blow, all the scenes of his life—the hopes of his boyhood—the dreams of his love, rose up before him like a picture.

And like a vast unbounded ocean, overhung with mists, and dark with clouds, was the idea of the Dread Unknown to his mind.

Amid all the memories of the past; the agonies of the present, or the anticipations of the future, did the face of the Ladye Annabel come like a dream to his soul, and the smile upon her lip was like the smile of a guardian spirit, beaming with hope and love.

“Oh, God—receive my soul!—Annabel, fare thee-well!”

The dagger descended, driven home with all the strength of his arm.

“Adrian!” exclaimed a hollow voice, and a strange hand thrown before the breast of the doomed felon struck his wrist, the instant the dagger’s point had touched the flesh.

The weapon flew from the hand of Adrian and fell on the other side of the cell.

He turned and beheld the muffled form of a monk, who had entered through the massive door, which had been unbolted without Adrian’s heeding the noise of locks and chains, so deep was his abstraction. The ruddy glare of torches streamed into the cell, and the sentinels who held them, in their endeavors to shake off their late terror and remorse, gave utterance to unfeeling and ribald jests.

“I say, Balvardo,” cried the sinister-eyed soldier, “does not the springald bear himself right boldly? And yet at break of day he dies!”

“Marry, Hugo,” returned the other, “he had better thought of making all these fine speeches ere he gave the—ha—ha—ha!—the physic to the old man.”

Reproving the sentinels for their insolence, the muffled monk closed the door, and approaching Adrian, exclaimed—

“My son, prepare thee for thy fate! The shades of night behold thee erect in the pride of manhood; the light of morn shall see thee prostrate, bleeding, dead. Thy soul shall stand before the bar of eternity. Art thou prepared for death, my son?”

“Father,” Adrian answered; “I have been ever a faithful son of the Holy Church, but its offices will avail me naught at this hour. Once, for all, I tell thee I will die without human prayers or human consolation. On the solemn thought of Him who gave me being, I alone rely for support in the hour of a fearful death. Thy errand is a vain one, Sir Priest, if thou dost hope to gain shrift or confession from me. I would be alone!”

“Thou art but young to die,” said the monk, in a quiet tone.

Adrian made no reply.

“Tell me, young sir,” cried the monk, seizing Adrian by the wrist, “wouldst thou accept life, though it were passed within the walls of a convent?”

“The cowl of the monk was never worn by a descendant of Albarone. I would pass my days as my fathers have done before me—at the head of armies and in the din of battle!”

The monk threw back his cowl and discovered a striking and impressive face; bearing marks of premature age, induced by blighted hopes and fearful wrongs. His hair, as black as jet, gathered in short curls around a high and pallid forehead; his eyebrows arched over dark, sparkling eyes; his nose was short and Grecian; his lips thin and expressive, and his chin well rounded and prominent. And as the cowl fell back, Adrian with a start beheld the monk of the ante-chamber.

“Count Adrian Di Albarone, this morning thou wert tried before the Duke of Florence, and his peers, for the murder of thy sire. Thou, a descendant of Albarone, connected with the royal blood of Florence, wert condemned on the testimony of two of thy father’s vassals, for this most accursed act. I ask thee, canst thou tell who it is that hath spirited up these perjured witnesses; and why it is that the Duke of Florence countenances the accusations!”

“In the name of God, kind priest, I thank thee for thy belief in my innocence. The author of this foul wrong, is, I shame to say it, my uncle, Aldarin, the Scholar. The reason why it is countenanced by the duke, is—” Adrian paused as if the words stuck in his throat; “is because he would wed my own fair cousin, the Ladye Annabel.”

“Ha!” exclaimed the monk, “my suspicions were not false. Let Aldarin look to his fate; and, as for the duke—” thrusting his hand into his bosom, he drew from his gown a miniature—it was the miniature of a beautiful maiden.

“Behold!” cried the monk, “Adrian Di Albarone, behold this countenance, where youth, and health, and love, beaming from every feature, mingle with the deep expression of a mind rich in the treasure of thoughts, pure and virginal in their beauty. Mark well the forehead, calm and thoughtful; the ruby lips, parting with a smile; the full cheek blooming with the rose buds of youth—mark the tracery of the arching neck; the half-revealed beauty of the virgin bosom. Adrian, this was the maiden of my heart, the one beloved of my very soul. I was the private secretary of the duke, he won my confidence—he betrayed it. Guilietta was the victim; and I sought peace and oblivion within the walls of a convent. I am now in his favor—he loads me with honors; I accept his gifts—aye, aye, Albertine, the Monk, takes the gold of the proud duke, that he may effect the great object of his existence—”