Valperga (49 page)

"I told you that I remained for three years in this
infernal house. You can easily imagine how slowly the days and
nights succeeded one to another, each adding to my age, each adding
one misery more to my list. Still I was the slave of him, who was a
man in form alone, and of his companions, who, if they did not
equal him in malice, yet were more vile, more treacherous, than he.
At length the Pope's party besieged the castle. The many crimes
of its possessor had drawn on him the hatred of the country round;
and the moment that a leader appeared, the whole peasantry flocked
as to a crusade to destroy their oppressor. He was destroyed. I saw
him die, calm, courageous and unrepenting. I stood alone near his
couch of blood-stained cloaks thrown in a heap upon the floor, on
which when he staggered into the room he had fallen; he asked me
for a cup of water; I raised his head, and gave him to drink; he
said--`I feel new strength, I shall be better soon.' And,
saying those words, he died.

"I was now free. I arose from the floor on which I knelt;
and dividing from my eyes my hair dabbled in his blood, I cut off
with his dagger the long and dripping locks, and threw them on his
body. I disguised me in the clothes of one of his pages, and hid
myself, until by the submission of his followers the outlet from my
prison should be free. As I said before, it was more a vast palace
than a castle, being without towers or battlements; but it was
fortified by numberless ditches and other obstacles, apparently
small, yet which, defended by slingers and archers, became almost
impregnable. But when the chief died, these were deserted; and the
partners of his rapine and his feasts filled the air with their
savage lamentations. The fortress was taken; and I escaped to the
mountains, the wild, wild mountains,--I sought them as a home after
my long and painful imprisonment.

"I was now free. The ilex trees shaded me; the waters
murmured beside me; the sweet winds passed over my cheeks. I felt
new life. I was no longer a haggard prisoner, the despairing victim
of others' crimes, the inhabitant of the dark and
blood--stained walls of a house, which hedged me in on all sides,
and interrupted the free course of my health even in sleep. I was
again Beatrice; I again felt the long absent sensations of joy: it
was paradise to me, to see the stars of heaven, unimpeded by the
grates of my dungeon-windows, to walk, to rest, to think, to speak,
uninterrupted and unheard. I became delirious with joy; I embraced
the rough trunks of the old trees, as if they were my sisters in
freedom and delight;--I took up in my hand the sparkling waters of
the stream, and scattered them to the winds;-- I threw myself on
the earth, I kissed the rocks, I raved with tumultuous pleasure.
Free! free! I can run, until my strength fails; I can rest on a
mossy bank, until my strength returns; I hear the waving of the
branches; I see the flight of the birds; I can lie on the grassy
floor of my mother-earth so long unvisited; and I can call nature
my own again. It was autumn, and the underwood of the forest had
strewn the ground with its withered leaves; the arbutus-berries,
chestnuts, and other fruits satisfied my appetite. I felt no want,
no fatigue; the common shapes of this world seemed arrayed in
unusual loveliness, to welcome and feast me on my new-found
liberty.

"I wandered many days, and penetrated into the wild country
of the Abruzzi. But I was again lost: I know not what deprived me
of reason thus, when I most needed it. Whether it were the joy, or
the sudden change, attendant on a too intense sensation of freedom,
which made me feel as if I interpenetrated all nature, alive and
boundless. I have recollections, as if sometimes I saw the woods,
the green earth, and blue sky, and heard the roaring of a mighty
waterfall which splashed me with its cold waters: but there is a
blank, as of a deep, lethargic sleep; and many weeks passed before
I awoke again, and entered upon the reality of life.

"I found myself in a cavern lying on the ground. It was
night; and a solitary lamp burned, fastened to the wall of the
cave; the half- extinguished ashes of a fire glimmered in a recess;
and a few utensils that appeared to have been intended for the
preparing food, seemed to mark this as a human habitation. It was
dry, and furnished with a few benches and a table, on which lay
bread and fruits. I felt as if I had become the inhabitant of the
dwelling of a spirit; and, with a strange, half-painful,
half-pleasurable feeling, I raised an apple to my lips, that by its
fragrance and taste I might assure myself that it was earthly. Then
again I looked around for some fellow--creature. I found a narrow
passage from my cave, which led to an inner apartment much smaller
and very low; on the ground, on a bed of leaves lay an old man: his
grey hairs were thinly strewn on his venerable temples, his beard
white, flowing and soft, fell to his girdle; he smiled even in his
sleep a gentle smile of benevolence. I knelt down beside him;
methought it was my excellent father, the lord Marsilio; but that
there were greater traces of thought and care upon the fallen
cheeks and wrinkled brow of this old man.

"He awoke: `My poor girl,' he said, `what would
you?'

"`I wish to know where I am, and what I do here?'

"My words convinced my good protector, that the kindly
sleep into which his medicines had thrown me, had restored my
reason; and, it being now day-break, he arose, and opened the door
of his cave. It was dug under the side of a mountain, covered by
ivy, wild vines, and other parasites, and shaded by ilex trees; it
opened on the edge of a small grassy platform, with a steep wall of
rock behind, and a precipice before: the mountain in which it was
scooped, was one of many that inclosed a rugged valley; and, from
one spot on the platform, I could distinguish a mass of waters
falling with a tremendous crash, which were afterwards hidden by
the inequalities of the mountain, and then were seen, a turbid and
swift river, at the bottom of the valley. The lower sides of the
mountain were covered with olive woods, whose sea-green colour
contrasted with the dark ilex, and the fresh-budding leaves of a
few chestnuts. I felt cold, and the mountain had just begun to be
tipped by the rising sun; it seemed as if no path led to or from
the platform, and that we were shut out from the whole world,
suspended on the side of a rocky mountain.

"This cavern had been an hospital for me during the long
winter months. The old man had found me straying wildly among the
forests, complaining of the heavy chains that bound me, and the
wrongs and imprisonment that I suffered. He, poor wretch, was an
outcast of his species, a heretic, a Paterin, who hid himself in
the woods from the fury of the priests who would have destroyed
him. He led me to his cave; he tended me as the kindest father; he
restored me to reason, and even then did not desert me. He lived
here quite alone; no one was intrusted with the secret of his
retreat; at night, muffled up and disguised, he often went to seek
for food, and again hastened back to peace and solitude.

"I partook his solitude for many months; at sunrise we
quitted our dwelling, and enjoyed the fresh air, and the view of
the sky and the hills, until the sight of the first countryman in
the vale below warned us to retire. On moonlight nights we sat
there; and, while she, lady of the night, moved slowly above us,
and the stars twinkled around, we talked, and, in our conversations
of faith, goodness and power, his doctrines unveiled to me, what
had before been obscure, and from him I learned that creed which
you hold in detestation, but which, believe me, has much to be said
in its behalf.

"Look, dear Euthanasia, daylight has made dim the glimmer
of your lamp, and bids me remember how often I have forgotten my
promise to be brief in my relation; it is now almost finished. I
soon greatly loved my kind guardian; he was the gentlest and most
amiable of mortals, wise as a Grecian sage, fearless and
independent. He died in torture: the bloodhounds hunted him from
his den; they bound his aged limbs; they dragged him to the stake.
He died without dread, I would fain believe almost without pain.
Could these things be, oh, my preserver, best and most excellent of
men? It were well befitting, that thou shouldst die thus, and that
I lived, and still live.

"It were tedious to relate how all this passed; how I wept
and prayed; how I escaped, and, half maddened by this misery,
cursed the creation and its cruel laws. The rest is all
uninteresting; I was returning from the task of carrying the last
legacy of this old man to his daughter at Genoa, when I was seized
in this town by the Inquisitors, and cast into prison,--you know
the rest.

"And now, dearest friend, leave me. Having related the
events of my past life, it makes me look on towards the future; it
is not enough to rise every day, and then lie down to sleep; I
would look on what I may become with firmness; I know that no
creature in the whole world is so miserable as I; but I have not
yet drained the cup of life; something still remains to be
done.

"Yet one word, my Euthanasia, of Him who is the law of my
life; and yet I dare not say what I thought of saying. You write to
him about me sometimes; do you not? You may still; I would not
check you in this. In truth he is the master of my fate; and it
were well that he knew all that relates to me."

Poor Beatrice then wept bitterly; but she waved her hand in sign
that she would be left alone; and Euthanasia retired. She had not
slept the whole night, but she felt no inclination to rest. The
last words of Beatrice seemed to imply that she wished that
Castruccio should know her story; so she sat down, and wrote an
abstract of it, while her eyes often filled with tears, as she
related the wondrous miseries of the ill-fated prophetess.

ON the following day Beatrice seemed far more calm. Euthanasia
had feared, that the reviving the memory of past sorrows, might
awaken the frenzy from which she had before suffered; but it was
not so. She had pined for confidence; her heart was too big to
close up in secrecy all the mighty store of unhappiness to which it
was conscious; but, having now communicated the particulars to
another, she felt somewhat relieved. She and Euthanasia walked up
and down the overgrown paths of the palace-garden; and, as Beatrice
held her friend's hand, after a silence of a few minutes she
said:

"I do not like to pry into the secrets of my own heart; and
yet I am ever impelled to do it. I was about to compare it to this
unweeded garden; but here all is still; and the progress of life,
be it beautiful or evil, goes on in peace: in my soul all
jars,--one thought strikes against another, and produces most vile
discord. Sometimes for a moment this ceases; and would that that
state of peace would endure for ever: but, crash!--comes in the
stroke of a mightier hand, which destroys all harmony and melody,
alas! that may be found in your gentler heart; in mine all
recollection of it even is extinct."

"I will tell you how this is, my sweet Beatrice,"
replied Euthanasia, playfully. "I will tell you what the human
mind is; and you shall learn to regulate its various powers. The
human soul, dear girl, is a vast cave, in which many powers sit and
live. First, Consciousness is as a sentinel at the entrance; and
near him wait Joy and Sorrow, Love and Hate, and all the quick
sensations that through his means gain entrance into our
hearts.

"In the vestibule of this cavern, still illumined by the
light of day, sit Memory with banded eyes, grave Judgement bearing
her scales, and Reason in a lawyer's gown. Hope and Fear dwell
there, hand in hand, twin sisters; the first (the elder by some
brief moments, of ruddy complexion, firm step, eyes eagerly looking
forward, and lips apart in earnest expectation,) would often hurry
on to take her seat beside Joy; if she were not held back by Fear,
the younger born; who, pale and trembling, would as often fly, if
Hope held not her hand, and supported her; her eyes are ever turned
back to appeal to Memory, and you may see her heart beat through
her dun robe. Religion dwells there also, and Charity, or sometimes
in their place, their counterfeits or opposites, Hypocrisy, Avarice
and Cruelty.

"Within, excluded from the light of day, Conscience sits,
who can see indeed, as an owl, in the dark. His temples are circled
by a diadem of thorns, and in his hand he bears a whip; yet his
garb is kingly, and his countenance, though severe, majestical.

"But beyond all this there is an inner cave, difficult of
access, rude, strange, and dangerous. Few visit this, and it is
often barren and empty; but sometimes (like caverns that we read
of, which are discovered in the bosoms of the mountains, and exist
in beauty, unknown and neglected) this last recess is decorated
with the strongest and most wondrous devices;--stalactites of
surpassing beauty, stores of unimagined wealth, and silver sounds,
which the dropping water makes, or the circulation of the air, felt
among the delicate crystals. But here also find abode owls, and
bats, and vipers, and scorpions, and other deadly reptiles. This
recess receives no light from outward day; nor has Conscience any
authority here. Sometimes it is lighted by an inborn light; and
then the birds of night retreat, and the reptiles creep not from
their holes. But, if this light do not exist, oh! then let those
beware who would explore this cave. It is hence that bad men
receive those excuses for their crimes, which take the whip from
the hand of Conscience, and blunt his sharp crown; it is hence that
the daring heretic learns strange secrets. This is the habitation
of the madman, when all the powers desert the vestibule, and he,
finding no light, makes darkling, fantastic combinations, and lives
among them. From thence there is a short path to hell, and the evil
spirits pass and repass unreproved, devising their temptations.