Valperga (48 page)

"Well; as I have said, I dwelt long and deeply upon my
plan, until every moment seemed a crime, that went by before I put
it in execution. The long winter passed thus; my poor mother, the
lady Marchesana, watched me, as a child might watch a favourite
bird fluttering in the agonies of death. She saw that some
mysterious and painful feeling oppressed me, that I no longer
appeared in public, that I shunned the worship of my admirers, that
the spirit of prophecy was dead within me; but I was silent, and
reserved; and her reverence for me (Good angels! her reverence for
me!) prevented any enquiries. In the spring the bishop Marsilio was
promoted to another see, and he was obliged to go to Avignon to
receive the investiture. Excellent and beloved old man! he blessed
me, and kissed me, and with words of affectionate advice departed.
I have never seen him more.

"When he was gone, the labour of my departure was
lightened; and in gentle and hesitating words I told my best and
loved mother that I had vowed a pilgrimage to Rome: she wished to
accompany me. Those were heart-breaking scenes, my Euthanasia, when
I left all my friends, all who loved me, and whom I had ever loved:
I knew that I should never see them again. How did I know this? In
truth, after having performed my vow with regard to you, I intended
to visit the sepulchres at Rome; and I might then have returned. I
was no prophetess; and yet I felt that mine was not a simple
pilgrimage, but an eternal separation from all former associations,
from every one I had ever known. Thus, hopeless of future good, I
deserted all that yet rendered life in any degree sufferable: I did
this to satisfy my sense of duty, to do homage to the divinity by
some atonement for his violated laws: I did this; and henceforward
I was to be an outcast, a poor lonely shrub on a bleak heath, a
single reed in a vast and overflowing river.

"I had known too much luxury in my youth; every one loved
me, and tended on me; I had seen about me eyes beaming with
affection, smiles all my own, words of deep interest and respect,
that had become to me a second nature. I departed alone at four in
the morning from Ferrara by the secret entrance of the
viscountess's palace, on a clear and lovely day in the spring.
I was dressed as the meanest pilgrim, and I carefully hid my white
hands and fair cheeks, which might have betrayed my way of life
during the past; except indeed when I was alone,--then I loved to
throw off my cloak, to bare my arms, my face, my neck to the
scorching sun-beams, that I might the sooner destroy a delicacy I
despised: the work was quickly done; a few hours exposure to the
sun of noon burnt up my skin, and made it red and common.

"The first day was one of unmixed pain; the sun parched my
frame; my feet were blistered, my limbs ached; I walked all day,
until bodily fatigue lulled my mental anguish, for I was unhappy
beyond all words. Alone, deserted by God and man, I had lost my
firm support, my belief in my own powers; I had lost my friends,
and I found, that the vain, self-sufficing, cloud--inhabiting
Beatrice was in truth a poor dependent creature, whose heart sunk,
when in the evening she came to a clear brook running through a
little wood, and she found no cup to drink, and no dainties to
satisfy her appetite. I dragged my weary limbs three miles further,
to an hospital for pilgrims, and repined over my coarse fare and
coarser bed:--I, the ethereal prophetess, who fancied that I could
feed upon air and beautiful thoughts, who had regarded my body but
as a servant to my will, to hunger and thirst only as I bade
it.

"Alone! alone! I travelled on day after day, in short, but
wearisome journeys, and I felt the pain of utter and forced
solitude; the burning sun shone, and the dews fell at evening, but
there was no breeze, no coolness to refresh me; the nights were
close, and my limbs, dried with the scorching of the day, and stiff
with walking, burned all night as if a furnace had glowed within
them. Were those slight evils? Alas! I was a spoiled child, and I
felt every pain as an agony.

"I felt ill; I caught cold one evening, when just after
sunset I threw myself down to rest under a tree, and the
unwholesome dew fell upon me. I got a low fever, which for a long
time I did not understand, feeling one day well, and the next
feverish, cold, and languid. Some attendant nuns at an hospital
found out my disorder, and nursed me; I was confined for six weeks;
and, when I issued forth, little of the fire of my eyes, or of the
beauty the lady Marchesana used to dwell upon, out-lived this
attack.--I was yellow, meagre,--a shadow of what I had been.

"My journey to your castle was very long. I crossed the
Apennines during the summer, and passing through Florence I arrived
at Pistoia in the beginning of June. But now my heart again failed;
I heard of your name, your prosperity, your beauty, the respect and
adoration you every where excited: it was a double penance to
humble myself before so excelling a rival. If you had been
worthless, a self-contenting pride would have eased my wounds, but
to do homage to my equal--oh! to one far my superior,--was a new
lesson to my stubborn soul. I remained nearly three months at
Pistoia, very unhappy, hesitating,--cast about, as a boat that for
ever shifts its sail, but can never find the right wind to lead it
into port.

"I visited you in September; do you remember my coming? do
you remember my hesitating gait, and low and trembling voice? I was
giddy--sick--I thought that death was upon me, for that nothing but
that great change could cause such an annihilation of my powers,
such an utter sinking of my spirit. A cold dew stood upon my
forehead, my eyes were glazed and sightless, my limbs trembled as
with convulsions. Castruccio loved you! Castruccio! it is long
since I have mentioned his name: during this weary journey never
did his loved image for a moment quit its temple, its fane, its
only home, that it still and for ever fills. Love him! it was
madness; yet I did;--yet I do;--put your hand upon my heart,--does
it not beat fast?"

Euthanasia kissed poor Beatrice's forehead; and, after a
short pause, she continued:

"My penance was completed, yet I did not triumph; an
unconquerable sadness hung over me; miserable dreams haunted my
sleep; and their recollected images strayed among my day--thoughts,
as thin and grim ghosts, frightening and astounding me. Once,--I
can never forget,--I had been oppressed for several days by an
overpowering and black melancholy, for which I could in no manner
account; it was not regret or grief; it was a sinking, an
annihilation of all my mental powers in which I was a passive
sufferer, as if the shadow of some mightier spirit was cast over to
darken and depress me. I was haunted as by a prophecy, or rather a
sense of evil, which I could neither define nor understand. Three
evenings after, as I sat beside a quiet spring that lulled me
almost to insensibility, the cause of my mournful reveries suddenly
flashed across me; it stalked on my recollection, as a terrific and
gigantic shadow, and made me almost die with terror. The memory of
a dream flashed across me. Again and again I have dreamed this
dream, and always on the eve of some great misfortune. It is my
genius, my dæmon. What was it? there was something said, something
done, a scene portrayed. Listen attentively, I intreat; there was a
wide plain flooded by the waters of an overflowing river, the road
was dry, being on the side of a hill above the level of the plain,
and I kept along the path which declined, wondering if I should
come to an insurmountable obstacle; at a distance before me they
were driving a flock of sheep; on my left, on the side of the hill,
there was a ruined circuit of wall, which inclosed the dilapidated
houses of a deserted town; at some distance a dreary, large,
ruinous house, half like a castle, yet without a tower,
dilapidated, and overgrown with moss, was dimly seen, islanded by
the flood on which it cast a night- black shade; the scirocco blew,
and covered the sky with fleecy clouds; and the mists in the
distance hovered low over the plain; a bat above me wheeled around.
Then something happened, what I cannot now tell, terrific it most
certainly was; Euthanasia, there is something in this strange
world, that we none of us understand.

"Euthanasia, I came to that scene; if I live, I did! I saw
it all as I had before seen it in the slumbers of the night. Great
God, what am I? I am frailer than the first autumnal leaf that
falls; I am overpowered."

She paused sobbing with passion; a clinging horror fell upon
Euthanasia; they were for a long time silent, and then Beatrice in
a low subdued voice continued:

"I had returned to Florence; I had passed through Arezzo; I
had left Thrasymene to the north; I had passed through Perugia,
Foligno, and Terni, and was descending towards the plain
surrounding Rome; the Tiber had overflowed, the whole of the low
country was under water; but I proceeded, descending the mountains,
until, having passed Narni, I came to the lowest hill which bounds
the Campagna di Roma; the scirocco blew; the mists were on the
hills, and half concealed the head of lone Soracte; the white
waters, cold and dreary, were spread far, waste and shelterless; on
my left was a high dark wall surrounding a ruined town--I
looked,--some way beyond I saw on the road a flock of sheep almost
lost in the distance,--my brain was troubled, I grew dizzy and
sick,--when my glazed eyes caught a glance of an old, large,
dilapidated house islanded in the flood,--the dream flashed across
my memory; I uttered a wild shriek, and fell lifeless on the
road.

"I again awoke, but all was changed: I was lying on a
couch, in a vast apartment, whose loose tapestries waved and sighed
in the wind;--near me were two boys holding torches which flared,
and their black smoke was driven across my eyes; an old woman was
chafing my temples.--I turned my head from the light of the
torches, and then I first saw my wicked and powerful enemy: he
leaned against the wall, observing me; his eyes had a kind of
fascination in them, and, unknowing what I did, hardly conscious
that he was a human creature, (indeed for a time it appeared to me
only a continuation of my dream,) I gazed on his face, which became
illuminated by a proud, triumphant, fiendlike smile.--I felt sick
at heart, and relapsed into a painful swoon.

"Well: I promised to be brief, and I go on dwelling on the
particulars of my tale, until your fair cheek is blanched still
whiter by fear. But I have said enough, nor will I tell that which
would chill your warm blood with horror. I remained three years in
this house; and what I saw, and what I endured, is a tale for the
unhallowed ears of infidels, or for those who have lost humanity in
the sight of blood, and not for so tender a heart as yours. It has
changed me, much changed me, to have been witness of these scenes;
I entered young, I came out grey, old and withered; I went in
innocent; and, if innocence consist in ignorance, I am now guilty
of the knowledge of crime, which it would seem that fiends alone
could contrive.

"What was he, who was the author and mechanist of these
crimes? he bore a human name; they say that his lineage was human;
yet could he be a man? During the day he was absent; at night he
returned, and his roofs rung with the sounds of festivity, mingled
with shrieks and imprecations. It was the carnival of devils, when
we miserable victims were dragged out to--

"Enough! enough! Euthanasia, do you wonder I, who have been
the slave of incarnate Evil, should have become a Paterin?

"That time has passed as a dream. Often my faculties were
exerted to the utmost; my energies alive, at work, combating;--but
I struggled against victory, and was ever vanquished. I have seen
the quiet stars shine, and the shadow of the grated window of the
hall lie upon the moon-enlightened pavement, and it crawled along
silently as I had observed it in childhood, so that truly I
inhabited the same world as you,--yet how different! Animal life
was the same; the household dog knew, and was at last obedient to
my voice; the cat slumbered in the sun;--what was the influence
that hung alone over the mind of man, rendering it cruel, hard and
fiendlike?

"And who was the author of these ills? There was something
about him that might be called beautiful; but it was the beauty of
the tiger, of lightning, of the cataract that destroys. Obedience
waited on his slightest motion; for he made none, that did not
command; his followers worshipped him, but it was as a savage might
worship the god of evil. His slaves dared not murmur;--his eyes
beamed with irresistible fire, his smile was as death. I hated him;
and I alone among his many victims was not quelled to submission. I
cursed him--I poured forth eloquent and tumultuous maledictions on
his head, until I changed his detested love into less dreadful,
less injurious hate. Yet then I did not escape; his boiling and
hideous passions, turned to revenge, now endeavoured to wreak
themselves in my misery. These limbs, my Euthanasia, have been
wrenched in tortures; cold, famine and thirst have kept like
blood-hounds a perpetual watch upon my wearied life; yet I still
live to remember and to curse.

"But, though life survived these rending struggles, my
reason sank beneath them!--I became mad. Oh! dearest friend, may
you never know what I suffered, when I perceived the shadow of a
false vision overpower me, and my sickening throes, when the bars
of my dungeon, its low roof, and black thick air, would, as it
were, peer upon me with a stifling sense of reality amidst my
insane transports. I struggled to recall my reason, and to preserve
it; I wept, I prayed;-- but I was again lost; and the fire that
dwelt in my brain gave unnatural light to every object. But I must
speak of that no more; methinks I again feel, what it is madness
only to recollect.