 8. The Avenger, Part I. 9. Why callest thou me murderer, and not rather the wrath of God, burning after the steps of the oppressor, and cleaning the earth when diswetched with blood? That series of terrific events by which our quiet city and university in the northeastern quarter of Germany were convulsed during the year 1816 has in itself and considered merely as a blind movement of human tiger passion ranging unchained among men, something too memorable to be forgotten or left without its own separate record. But the more lesson impressed by these events is yet more memorable, and deserves the deep attention of coming generations in their struggle after human improvement, not merely in its own limited field of interest directly awakened, but in all analogous fields of interest, as in fact already, and more than once, in connection with these very events, this lesson has obtained the effectual attention of Christian kings and princes assembled in Congress. No tragedy indeed among all the said ones by which the charities of the human heart or of the fireside have ever been outraged can better merit a separate chapter in the private history of German manners or social life than this unparalleled case, and on the other hand no one can put in a better claim to be the historian than myself. I was at the time, and still am, a professor in that city and university which had the melancholy distinction of being its theater. I knew familiarly all the parties who were concerned in it, either as sufferers or as agents. I was present from the first to last, and watched the whole cause of the mysterious storm which fell upon our devoted city in a strength like that of a West Indian hurricane, and which did seriously threaten at one time to depopulate our university through the dark suspicions which settled upon its members, and the natural reaction of generous indignation in repelling them, while the city in its most stationary and native classes would very soon have manifested their awful sense of things, and the hideous insecurity of life, and of the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearse below their very feet by sacrificing whenever circumstances allowed them their houses and beautiful gardens in exchange for days uncursed by panic and nights unpolluted by blood. Nothing I can take upon myself to assert was left undone of all that human foresight could suggest or human ingenuity could accomplish, but observed the melancholy result. The most certain did these arrangements strike people as remedies for the evil so much the more effectually did they aid the terror, but above all the awe, the sense of mystery, when ten cases of total extermination applied to separate households had occurred, in every one of which these precautionary aides had failed to yield the slightest assistance. The horror, the perfect frenzy of fear which seized upon the town after that experience baffles all attempts at description. Had these various contrivances failed merely in some human and intelligible way as by bringing the aid too tardily, still in such cases, though the danger would no less have been evidently deepened, nobody would have felt any further mystery than what from the very first rested upon the persons and the motives of the murderers. But as it was, when in ten separate cases of exterminating carnage, the astounded police, after an examination the most searching pursued from day to day, and almost exhausting the patience by the muteness of the investigation, had finally pronounced that no attempt apparently had been made to benefit by any of the signals preconcerted, that no footstep apparently had moved in that direction, then, and after that result, a blind misery of all fear fell upon the population, so much the worse that any anguish of a beleaguered city that is awaiting the storming fury of a victorious enemy, by how much the shadowy, the uncertain, the infinite is at all times more potent in mastering the mind than a danger that is known, measurable, palpable, and human. The very police, instead of offering protection or encouragement, were seized with terror for themselves, and the general feeling, as it was described to me by a grave citizen whom I met in a morning walk, for the overmastering sense of a public calamity broke down every barrier of reserve, and all men talked freely to all men in the streets, as they would have done during the rockings of an earthquake, was, even among the boldest, like that which sometimes takes possession of the minds and dreams, when one feels oneself sleeping alone, utterly divided from all call or hearing of friends, doors open that should be shut, or unlocked that should be triply secured, the very walls gone, barriers swallowed up by unknown abysses, nothing around one but frail curtains, and a world of illimitable nights, whisperings at a distance, correspondence going on between darkness and darkness, like one deep calling to another, and the dreamer's own heart, the center from which the whole network of this unimaginable chaos radiates, by means of which the blank privations of silence and darkness become powers the most positive and awful. Agencies of fear, as any other passion, and above all, of passion felt in communion with thousands, and in which the heart beats in conscious sympathy with an entire city, through all its regions of high and low, young and old, strong and weak. Such agencies availed to raise and transfigure the natures of men. Mean minds become elevated, dull men become eloquent, and when matters came to this crisis, the public feeling, as made known by voice, gesture, manner or words, was such that no stranger could represent it to his fancy. In that respect, therefore, I had an advantage, being upon the spot through the whole cause of the affair, forgiving a faithful narrative, as I had still more eminently, from the sort of central station which I occupied with respect to all the movements of the case. I may add that I had another advantage, not possessed or not in the same degree, by any other inhabitant of the town. I was personally acquainted with every family of the slightest account belonging to the resident population, whether among the old local gentry or the new settlers whom the late wars had driven to take refuge within our walls. It was in September, 1815, that I received a letter from the Chief Secretary of the Prince of Am, a nobleman connected with the diplomacy of Russia, from which I quote an extract. I wish, in short, to recommend to your attentions, and in terms stronger than I know how to devise, a young man on whose behalf the Tsar himself is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest. He was at the Battle of Waterloo, as an aide-camp, to a Dutch general officer, and is decorated with distinctions one upon that awful day. However, though serving in that instance under English orders, and although an Englishman of rank, he does not belong to the English military service. He has served young as he is, under various banners, and under ours, in particular, in the cavalry of our imperial guard. He is English by birth, nephew to the Earl of E, and here presumptive to his immense estates. There is a wild story current that his mother was gypsy of transcended beauty, which may account for his somewhat moorish complexion, though, after all, that is not of a deeper tinge than I have seen among many an Englishman. He is himself one of the noblest looking of God's creatures. Both father and mother, however, are now dead. Since then he has become the favourite of his uncle, who detained him in England after the emperor had departed, and as his uncle is now in the last stage of infirmity, Mr. Wyndham's succession to the vast family estates is inevitable, and probably near at hand. Meantime he is anxious for some assistance in his studies. Intellectually he stands in the very first rank of men, as I am sure he will not be slow to discover, but his long military service, and the unparalleled tumult of our European history since 1805, have interfered, as you may suppose, with the cultivation of his mind, for he entered the cavalry service of a German power when a mere boy, and shifted about from service to service, as the hurricane of war blew from this point on from that. During the French anabasis to Moscow, he entered our service, made himself a prodigious favourite with the whole imperial family, and even now is only in his twenty-second year. As to his accomplishments, they will speak for themselves. They are infinite, and applicable to every situation of life. Greek is what he wants from you, never ask about terms. He will acknowledge any trouble he may give you, as he acknowledges all trouble, en prise. And ten years hence, you will look back with pride upon having contributed your part to the formation of one whom all here at St. Petersburg, not soldiers only, but we diplomats look upon as certain to prove a great man, and a leader among the intellectuals of Christendom. Two or three other letters followed, and at length it was arranged that Mr. Maximilian Wyndham should take up his residence at my monastic abode for one year. He was to keep a table, and an establishment of servants at his own costs, was to have an apartment of some dozen or so rooms, the unrestricted use of their library, with some other public privileges willingly conceded by the magistracy of the town, and returned for all which he was to pay me a thousand guineas, and already beforehand, by way of acknowledgement for the public civilities of the town, he sent, through my hands, a contribution of three hundred guineas to the various local institutions for education of the poor, or for charity. The Russian secretary had letterly corresponded with me from a little German town, not more than ninety miles distant, and, as he had special couriers at his service, the negotiations advanced so rapidly that all was closed before the end of September. And when once that consummation was attained, I, that previously had breathed no syllable of what was stirring, now gave loose to the interesting tidings, and suffered them to spread through the whole compass of the town. It will be easily imagined that such a story, already romantic enough, in its first outline, would lose nothing in the telling. An Englishman to begin with, which name of itself, and at all times, is a password into German favour, but much more since the late memorable wars that, but for Englishmen, would have drooped into disconnected efforts. Next, an Englishman of rank and of the autonoblasts, then a soldier covered with brilliant distinctions, and in the most brilliant arm of the service. Young, moreover, and yet a veteran by his experience, fresh from the most awful battle of this planet since the day of Fasalia, radiant with the favour of courts and of imperial ladies, finally, which alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts. An Antinius of faultless beauty, a Gracian Statute, as it were, into which the breath of life had been breathed by some modern Pygmalion. Such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man's head should not have required for its effect the vulgar consummation. And yet too many it was the consummation and crest of the whole, that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of romance or the necessities of a fairytale. Unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society. Every tongue was busy in discussing the marvellous young Englishman from morning to night. Every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal appearance of this gay apparition. On his arrival at my house I became sensible of a truth which I had observed some years before. The commonplace maxim is, that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high. This, which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally. It is true then and there only when there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any cause where the merit is transcended of its kind it is always useful to rack the expectations up to the highest point. In anything which partakes of the infinite the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification, while it is certain that ordinary observers possessing little sensibility, unless where they have been warned to expect, will often fail to see what exists in the most conspicuous splendour. In this instant it certainly did no harm to the subject of expectation that I had been warned to look for so much. The warning at any rate, put me on the lookout for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in his personal appearance, while, on the other hand, this existed in such excess, so far transcending anything I had ever met with in my experience, that no expectation which it is in words to raise could have been disappointed. These thoughts travelled with the rapidity of light through my brain. As at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and power which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me, power and the contemplation of power, and any absolute incarnation of grandeur or excess, necessarily have the instantaneous effect of quelling all perturbation. My composure was restored in a moment. I looked steadily at him, we both bowed, and at the moment when he raised his head from that inclination I caught the glance of his eye, an eye such as might have been looked for in the face of such noble liniments, blending the nature of the star with that of summer skies, and, therefore, meant by nature for the residence and organ of serene and gentle emotions, but it surprised, and at the same time filled me more almost with consternation than with pity, to observe that in those eyes a light of sadness had settled more profound than seemed possible for youth, or almost commensurate to a human sorrow, a sadness that might have become a Jewish prophet when laden with inspirations of woe. Two months had now passed away since the arrival of Mr. Wyndham. He had been universally introduced to the superior society of the place, and, as I need hardly say, universally received with favour and distinction. In reality, his wealth and importance, his military honours, and the dignity of his character, as expressed in his manners and deportments, were too eminent to allow of his being treated with less than the highest attention in any society whatever. But the effect of these various advantages, enforced and recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare, was somewhat too potent for the comfort and self-possession of ordinary people, and rarely exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He was not naturally of a reserved turn, far from it. His disposition had been open, frank and confiding originally, and his roving, adventurous life, of which considerably more than one half had been passed in camps, had communicated to his manners a more than military frankness. But the profound melancholy which possessed him, from whatever cause it arose, necessarily chilled the native freedom of his demeanour, unless when it was revived by strength of friendship of love. The effect was awkward and embarrassing to all parties. Every voice paused or faltered when he entered a room, did silence and soot, not an eye but was directed upon him, or else sunk and timidity settled upon the floor, and young ladies seriously lost the power for a time of doing more than murmuring a few confused half-inarticulate syllables or half-inarticulate sounds. The solemnity, in fact, of a first presentation, and the utter impossibility of soon recovering a free, unembarrassed movement of conversation made such scenes really distressing to all who participated in them, either as actors or spectators. Certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly beauty, however heroic, and in whatever excess. It arose in part from the many and extraordinary endowments which had centred in this person, not less from fortune than from nature, in part also, as I have said, from the profound sadness and freezing gravity of Mr. Wyndham's manner, but still more from the perplexing mystery which surrounded that sadness. Were there, then, no exceptions to this condition of awestruck admiration? Yes, one at least there was, in whose bosom the spell of all conquering passion soon thought every trace of icy reserve. While the rest of the world retained a dim sentiment of awe toward Mr. Wyndham, Margaret Liebenheim only heard of such a feeling to wonder that it could exist toward him. Never was there so victorious a conquest interchanged between two youthful hearts. Never before such a rapture of instantaneous sympathy. I did not witness the first meeting of this mysterious Maximilian and this magnificent Margaret, and do not know whether Margaret manifested that trepidation and embarrassment which distressed so many of her youthful co-rivals. But, if she did, it must have fled before the first glance of the young man's eye, which would interpret, past all misunderstanding, the homage of his soul and the surrender of his heart. Their third meeting I did see, and there all shadow of embarrassment had vanished, except indeed of that delicate embarrassment which clings to impassioned admiration. On the part of Margaret it seemed as if a new world had dawned upon her that she had not so much as suspected among the capacities of human experience. Like some bird she seemed, with powers unexercised for soaring and flying, not understood even as yet, and that never until now had found an element of error capable of sustaining her wings or tempting her to put forth her buoyant instincts. He, on the other hand, now first found the realization of his dreams, and for me a possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated, fearing, however, that in his own case it might prove a chimera or that he might never meet a woman answering the demands of his heart, he now found a corresponding reality that left nothing to seek. Here, then, and thus far, nothing but happiness had resulted from their new arrangements. But if this had been little anticipated by many, far less had I, for my part, anticipated the unhappy revolution which was wrought in the whole nature of Ferdinand von Haraldstein. He was the son of a German baron, a man of good family, but of small estate who had been pretty nearly a soldier of fortune in the Prussian service, and had, late in life, one sufficient favour with the King and other military superiors to have an early prospect of obtaining a commission under flattering auspices for this only son, a son endeared to him as the companion of unprosperous years and as a dutifully affectionate child. Ferdinand had yet another hold upon his father's affection. His features preserved to the baron's unclouded remembrance a most faithful and living memorial of that angelic wife who had died in giving birth to this third child, the only one who had long survived her. Anxious that his son should go through a regular course of mathematical instruction, now becoming annually more important in all the artillery services throughout Europe, and that he should receive a tincture of other liberal studies which he had painfully missed in his own military career the baron chose to keep a son for the last seven years at our college, until he was now entering upon his twenty-third year. For the four last he had lived with me as the sole people whom I had, or meant to have, had not the brilliant proposals of the young Russian guardsmen persuaded me to break my resolution. Ferdinand von Haraldstein had good talents, not dazzling, but respectable, and so amiable were his temper and manners that I had introduced him everywhere and everywhere he was a favourite, and everywhere, indeed, except exactly there where only in this world he cared for favour. Margret Liebheim, she it was whom he loved, and had loved for years, with the whole ardour of his ardent soul, she it was for whom, or at whose command, he would willingly have died. Early he had felt that in her hands lay his destiny, that she it was who must be his good or his evil genius. At first, and perhaps to the last, I pitied him exceedingly, but my pity soon ceased to be mingled with respect. Before the arrival of Mr. Wyndham he had shown himself generous, indeed magnanimous, but never was there so painful an overthrow of a noble nature as manifested itself in him. I believe that he had not himself suspected the strength of his passion, and the sole resource for him, as I said often, was to quit the city, to engage in active pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me, dreaming with his eyes open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful, agitated. Sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath, invoking some absent person, praying, beseeching, menacing some air-wolf phantom. Sometimes he slunk into solitary corners, muttering to himself, and with gestures soarfully significant, or with tones and fragments of ex-postulation that moved the most callous to compassion. Still he turned a deaf ear to the only practical counsel that had a chance of reaching his ears, like a bird under the fascination of a rattlesnake, he would not summon up the energies of his nature to make an effort at flying away. Be gone while it is time, said others, as well as myself, for more than I saw enough to fear some fearful catastrophe. Lead us not into temptation, said his confessor to him in my hearing. For, though Prussians, the von Harelsteins were Roman Catholics. Lead us not into temptation, that is our daily prayer to God. Then, my son, being led into temptation, do not persist in quoting, nay, almost tempting temptation. Try the effects of absence, though but for a month. The good father even made an overture toward imposing a penance upon him that would have involved an absence of some duration. But he was obliged to dissist, for he saw that, without effecting any good, he would merely add spiritual disobedience to the other offenses of the young man. Ferdinand himself drew his attention to this. For he said, Reverend Father, do not you, with the purpose of removing me from temptation, be yourself the instrument for tempting me into a rebellion against the church? Do not you weave snares about my steps, snares they are already, but too many? The old man's side, and dissisted. Then came, but enough, from pity, from sympathy, from counsel, and from consolation, and from scorn. From each of these alike the post-dricken deer recoiled into the wilderness. He fled for days together into solitary parts of the forest, fled as I still hoped and prayed, in good earnest of a long farewell. But alas, no, still he returned to the haunts of his ruined happiness, and buried hopes, at each return looking more like the wreck of his former self. And once I heard a penetrating monk observe, whose convience stood near the city gates. There goes one ready equally for doing or suffering, and of whom we shall soon hear that he is involved in some great catastrophe. It may be of deep calamity. It may be of memorable guilt. So stood matters among us. January was drawing to its close. The weather was growing more and more winterly. High winds, piercingly cold, were raving through our narrow streets. And still the spirit of social festivity bade defiance to the storms which sank through our ancient forests. From the accident of our magistracy being selected for the tradesmen of the city, the hospitalities of the place were far more extensive than what otherwise have happened. For every member of the corporation gave two annual entertainments in his official character, and such was the rivalship which prevailed, that often one quarter of the year's income was spent upon these garlas. No was any ridicule thus incurred, for the costliness of the entertainment was understood to be an expression of official pride, done in honour of the city, not as an effort of personal display. It followed, from the spirit in which these half-yearly dances originated, that being given on the part of the city, every stranger of rank was marked out as a privileged guest, and the hospitality of the community would have been equally affronted by failing to offer or by failing to accept the invitation. Hence it happened that the Russian guardsmen had been introduced into many a family which otherwise could not have hoped for such a distinction. On the evening at which I am now arrived, the 22nd of January, 1816, the whole city, in its wealthier classes, was assembled beneath the roof of a tradesman who had the heart of a prince. In every point our entertainment was superb, and I remarked that the music was the finest I had heard for years. Our host was in joyous spirits, proud to survey the splendid company he had gathered under his roof, happy to witness their happiness, elated in their elation. Joyous was the dance, joyous were all the faces that I saw, up to midnight, very soon after which time supper was announced, and that also, I think, was the most joyous of all the banquets I ever witnessed. The accomplished guardsman outshone himself in brilliancy, even his melancholy relaxed. In fact, how could it be otherwise? Near to him sat Margaret Liebenheim, hanging upon his words, more lustrous and bewitching than ever I had beheld her. There she had been placed by the host, and everybody knew why. That is one of the luxuries attached to love. All men seat their places with pleasure, women make way. Even she herself knew, though not obliged to know, why she was seated in that neighbourhood, and took a place, if with a rosy suffusion upon her cheeks, yet with fulness of happiness at her heart. The guardsman pressed forward to claim Ms Liebenheim's hand for the next dance, a movement which she was quick to favour, by retreating behind one or two parties from a person who seemed coming toward her. The music again began to pour its voluptuous tides through the bounding pulses of the youthful company. Again the flying feet of the dancers began to respond to the measures. Again the mounting spirit of delight began to fill the sails of the hurrying night with steady inspiration. All went happily, already had one dance finished, some were pacing up and down, leaning on the arms of their partners, some were reposing from their exertions, when, oh heavens, what a shriek, what a gathering tumult. Every eye was bent toward the doors, every eye strained forward to discover what was passing, but there every moment less and less could be seen, for the gathering crowd more and more intercepted the view. So much the more was the ear at leisure for the shrieks redoubled upon shrieks. Ms Liebenheim had moved downward to the crowd. From her superior height she overlooked all the ladies at the point where she stood. In the centre stood a rustic girl, whose features had been familiar to her for some months. She had recently come to the city and lived with her uncle, a tradesman, not ten doors from Margaret's own residence. Partly on the terms of a kinswoman, partly as a servant on trial. At this moment she was exhausted with excitement and the nature of the shock she had sustained. Mia Panik seemed to have mastered her, and she was leaning, unconscious and weeping, upon the shoulder of some gentleman who was endeavouring to soothe her. A silence of horror seemed to possess the company, most of whom were still unacquainted with the cause of the alarming interruption. A few, however, who had hurt her first agitated words, finding that they waited in vain for a fuller explanation, now rushed tumultuously out of the ballroom to satisfy themselves on the spot. The distance was not great, and within five minutes several persons returned hastily and cried out to the crowd of ladies that all was true which the young girl had said. What was true? That her uncle and Mr. Weishaupt's family had been murdered, that not one member of the family had been spared, namely, Mr. Weishaupt himself and his wife, neither of them much above sixty, but both infirmed beyond their years. Two maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, from forty to forty-six years of age, and an elderly female domestic. An incident happened during the recital of these horrors, and the details which followed that furnished matter for conversation even in these hours when so thrilling an interest had possession of all minds. Many ladies fainted, among them, Miss Liebenheim, and she would have fallen to the ground but for Maximilian, who sprang forward and caught her in his arms. She was long of returning to herself, and during the agony of his suspense he stooped and kissed her pellet lips. That sight was more than could be borne by one who stood a little behind the grip. He rushed forward with eyes glaring like a tiger's and leveled a blow at Maximilian. It was poor, maniacal von Harrelstein, who had been absent in the forest for a week. Many people stepped forward and checked his arm, uplifted for repetition of this outrage. Warnert, too, had some influence with him and led him away from the spot, while to Maximilian so absorbed was he that he had not so much as perceived the affront offered to himself. Margaret, on reviving, was confounded at finding herself so situated amidst a great crowd, and yet the poods complained that there was a look of love exchanged between herself and Maximilian, that ought not to have escaped her in such a situation. If they meant by such a situation, one so public, it must be also recollected that it was a situation of excessive agitation, but if they alluded to the horrors of the moment, no situation more naturally opens the heart to affection and confiding love than the recoil from scenes of exquisite terror. CHAPTER III. THE EVENGER. PART II. by Thomas de Quincy An examination went on that night before the magistrates, but all was dark, although suspicion attached to a negro named Aaron, who had occasionally been employed in menial services by the family and had been in the house immediately before the murder. The circumstances were such as to leave every man at utter perplexity as to the presumption for and against him. His mode of defending himself and his general deportment were marked by the coolest, nay, the most sneering indifference. The first thing he did, on being acquainted with his suspicions against himself, was to laugh ferociously and to all appearances most cordially and unaffectedly. He demanded whether a poor man like himself would have left so much wealth, as lay scattered abroad in that house. Gold repeaters, messy plates, gold snuff boxes, untouched. The argument certainly weighed much in his favour, and yet again it was turned against him, for a magistrate asked him how he happened to know already that nothing had been touched. True it was, an effect which had puzzled no less than it had awed the magistrates, that upon their examination of the premises many rich articles of bijouterie, jewelry, and personal ornaments had been found lying unduranged, and apparently in their usual situations. Articles so portable that in the very hastiest flight some might have been carried off. In particular there was a crucifix of gold, enriched with jewels so large and rare that of itself it would have constituted a price of great magnitude. Yet this was left untouched, though suspended in a little oratory that had been magnificently adorned by the elder of the maiden sisters. There was an altar, in itself a splendid object, furnished with every article of the most costly material and walkmanship for the private celebration of mass. This crucifix, as well as everything else in the little closet, must have been seen by one at least of the murderous party, for hither had one of the ladies fled, hither had one of the murderous pursued. She had clasped the golden pillars which supported the altar, had turned perhaps her dying looks upon the crucifix. For there with one arm still wreathed about the altar foot, though in her agony she had turned round upon her face, that the elder sister lie when the magistrates first broke open the street door, and upon the beautiful parkette, or inlaid floor which ran around the rim, were still impressed the footsteps of the murderer. These it was hoped, might furnish a clue to the discovery of one at least among the murderous band. They were rather difficult to trace accurately, those parts of the traces which lay upon the black tessellae being less distinct in the outline than the others upon the white or coloured. Most unquestionably, so far as disswent it furnished a negative circumstance in favour of the negro, for the footsteps were very different in outline from his, and smaller, for Aaron was a man of colossal build. And as to his knowledge of the state in which the premises had been found, and his having so familiarly relied upon the fact of no robbery having taken place, as an argument on his own behalf, he contended that he had himself been among the crowd that pushed into the house along with the magistrates. That, from his previous acquaintance with the rims, and their ordinary condition, a glance of the eye had been sufficient for him to ascertain the undisturbed condition of all the valuable property most obvious to the grasp of a robber that, in fact, he had seen enough for his argument before he and the rest of the mob had been ejected by the magistrates. But finally, that independently of all this, he had heard both the officers, as they conducted him, and all the tumultuous gatherings of people in the street arguing for the mysteriousness of the bloody transaction upon that very circumstance of so much gold, silver and jewels being left behind untouched. In six weeks or less from the date of this terrific event the Negro was set at liberty by a majority of voices among the magistrates. In that short interval other events had occurred no less terrific and mysterious. In this first murder, though the motive was dark and unintelligible, yet the agency was not so, ordinary assassins, apparently, and with ordinary means, had assailed a helpless and unprepared family, had separated them, attacked them singly in flight, for, in this first case, all but one of the murdered persons appeared to have been making for the street door, and in all this there was no subject for wonder, except the original one as to the motive. But now came a series of cases destined to fling this earliest murder into the shade. Nobody could now be unprepared, and yet the tragedies, hands forward, which passed before us one by one and said leisurely or in terrific groups, seemed to argue a lethargy like that of a poplixy in the victims, one and all. The very midnight of mysterious awe fell upon all minds. Three weeks had passed since the murder at Mr. Weishaupt's. Three weeks, the most agitated that had been known in this sequestered city, we felt ourselves solitary and thrown upon our own resources, all combination with other towns being unavailing from their great distance. Our situation was no ordinary one. Had there been some mysterious robbers among us, the chances of a visit divided among so many would have been too small to distress the most timid. While to young and high-spirited people, with courage to spare for ordinary trials, such a state of expectation would have sent pulses of pleasurable anxiety among the nerves, but murderers, exterminating murderers, closed in mystery and out-darkness, these were objects too terrific for any family to contemplate with fortitude. Had these very murderers added to their functions those of robbery, they would have become less terrific. Nine out of every ten would have found themselves discharged, as it were, from the role of those who were liable to a visit, while such as knew themselves liable would have had warning of their danger in the fact of being rich, and would, from the very riches which constituted that danger, have derived the means of repelling it. But as things were, no man could guess what it was that must make him obnoxious to the murderers. Imagination exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes, which could by possibility have made the poor wise-helps objects of such hatred to any man. True, they were bigoted in a degree which indicated feebleness of intellect, but that wounded no man in particular, while to many it recommended them. True, their charity was narrow and exclusive, but to those of their own religious body it expanded magnificently, and, being rich beyond their wants, or any means of employing wealth, which their gloomy eschaticism allowed, they had the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent papers of the suburbs. As to the old gentleman and his wife, their infirmities confined them to the house. Nobody remembered to have seen them abroad for years. How, therefore, or when could they have made an enemy? And with respect to the maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, they were simply weak-minded persons, now and then too censorious, but not placed in a situation to incur serious anger from any quarter, and too little heard of in society to occupy much of anybody's attention. Conceive, then, that three weeks have passed away, that the poor Weishaupt have been laden that narrow sanctuary which no murderous voice will ever violate. Quiet has not returned to us, but the first flutterings of panic have subsided. People are beginning to respire freely again, and such another space of time would have secretised our wounds, when, hark! a church bell rings out a loud alarm. The night is starlight and frosty, the iron notes are heard clear, solemn, but agitated. What could this mean? I hurried to a room over the porters' lodge, and, opening the window, I cried out to a man passing hastily below. What, in God's name, is the meaning of this? It was a watchman belonging to our district. I knew his voice, he knew mine, and he replied in a great agitation. It is another murder, sir, at the old town counsellors, albinas, and this time they have made a clear house of it. God preserve us! Has the curse been pronounced upon the city? What can be done? What are the matter-strets going to do? I don't know, sir. I have orders to run to the Blackfriars, where another meeting is gathering. Shall I say you will attend, sir? Yes, no. Stop a little. No matter. You may go on. I'll follow you immediately. I went instantly to Maximillian's room. He was lying asleep on a sofa, at which I was not surprised, for there had been a severe stacked chase in the morning. Even at this moment I found myself arrested by two objects, and I paused to survey them. One was Maximillian himself. A person so mysterious took precedency of other interests, even at a time like this, and especially by his features, which, composed in profound sleep, as sometimes happens, assumed a new expression, which arrested me chiefly by awaking some confused remembrance of the same features seen under other circumstances and in times long past. But where? This was what I could not recollect, though once before a thought of the same sword had crossed my mind. The other object of my interest was a miniature which Maximillian was holding in his hand. He had gone to sleep apparently looking at this picture, and the hand which held it had slipped down on the sofa, so that it was in danger of falling. I released the miniature from his hand, and surveyed it attentively. It represented a lady of sunny oriental complexion, and features the most noble that it is possible to conceive. One might have imagined such a lady with her raven looks and imperial eyes to be the favourite sultana of some Amurat or Mohammed. What was she to Maximillian, or what had she been? For, by the tear which I had once seen him drop upon this miniature when he believed himself unobserved, I conjectured that her dark dresses were already late low, and her name among the list of vanished things. Probably she was his mother, for the dress was rich with pearls and evidently that of the person in the highest rank of court beauties. I sighed as I thought of the stern melancholy of her son, if Maximillian were he, as connected, probably, with the fate and fortunes of this majestic beauty, somewhat hearty perhaps in the expression of her fine features, but still noble, generous, confiding. Laying the picture on the table, I awoke Maximillian and told him of the dreadful news. He listened attentively, made no remark, but proposed that we should go together to the meeting of our quarter at the Black Friars. He coloured upon observing that miniature on the table, and therefore I frankly told him in what situation I had found it, and that I had taken the liberty of admiring it for a few moments. He pressed attendily to his lips, sighed heavily, and we walked away together. I pass over the frenzied state of feeling in which we found the meeting. Fear, or rather horror, did not promote harmony. Many quarreled with each other in discussing the suggestions brought forward, and Maximillian was the only person attended to. He proposed a nightly mounted patrol for every district, and in particular he offered, as being himself a member of the university, that the students should form themselves into a guard, and go out by rotation to keep watch and ward from sunset to sunrise. Arrangements were made toward that object by the few people who retained possession of their senses, and for the present we separated. Never in fact did any event so keenly try the difference between man and man. Some started up into heroes under the excitement. Some, alas for the dignity of man, drooped into helpless imbecility. Women, in some cases, rose superior to man, but yet not so often as might have happened under less mysterious danger. A woman is not unwombingly because she confronts danger boldly, but I have remarked, with respect to female courage, that it requires, more than that of man, to be sustained by hope, and that it droops more certainly in the presence of a mysterious danger. The fancy of women is more active, if not stronger, and it influences more directly the physical nature. In this case few were the women who made even a show of defying the danger. On the contrary, with them fear took the form of sadness, while with many of the men it took that of wrath. And how did the Russian guardsman conduct himself amidst this panic? Many were surprised at his behaviour. Some complained of it. I did neither. He took a reasonable interest in each separate case, listened to the details with attention, and in the examination of persons able to furnish evidence never failed to suggest judicious questions. But still he manifested a coolness almost amounting to carelessness, which too many appeared revolting. But these people I decide to notice that all the other military students who had been long in the army felt exactly in the same way. In fact the military service of Christendom, for the last ten years, had been anything but a parade service, and to those therefore who were familiar with every form of horrid butchery, the mere outside horrors of a death had lost much of their terror. In the recent murder there had not be much to call forth sympathy. The family consisted of two old bachelors, two sisters, and one grand niece. The niece was absent on a visit, and the two old men were cynical misers, to whom little personal interest attached. Still, in this case, as in that of the Weishaupts, the same two-fold mystery confounded the public mind, the mystery of the how, and the profounder mystery of the why. Here again no atom of property was taken, though both the misers had hordes of Ducats and English Guineas in the very room where they died. Their bias again, though of an unpopular character, had rather availed to make them unknown than to make them hateful. In one point this case differed memorably from the other, that instead of falling helpless, or flying victims, as the Weishaupts had done, these old men, strong, resolute, and not so much taken by surprise, left proofs that they had made a desperate defence. The furniture was partly smashed to pieces, and the other details furnished evidence still more revolting of the acharnment with which the struggle had been maintained. In fact, with them a surprise must have been impracticable, as they admitted nobody into their house on visiting terms. It was thought similar that from each of these domestic tragedies a benefit of the same sort should result to young persons standing nearly the same relation. The girl who gave the alarm at the ball, with two little sisters, and little orphan nephew, their cousin, divided the very large inheritance of the Weishaupts. And in this latter case the accumulated savings of two long lives all vested in the person of the amiable grandniece. But now, as if in mockery of all our anxious consultations and elaborate devices, three fresh mergers took place on the two consecutive nights succeeding these new arrangements. And in one case, as nearly as time could be noted, the mounted patrol must have been within call at the very moment when the awful work was going on. I shall not dwell much upon them, but a few circumstances are too interesting to be passed over. The earliest case on the first of the two nights was that of a courier. He was fifty years old, not rich, but well-loved. His first wife was dead, and his daughters by her were married away from their father's house. He had married his second wife, but having no children by her, and keeping no servants, it is probable that, but for an accident, no third person would have been in the house at the time when the murderers got admittance. About seven o'clock, a wayfaring man, a journeyman courier, who, according to our German system, was now in his Wanderjahre, entered the city from the forest. At the gate he made some inquiries about the couriers and tanners of our town, and, agreeably to the information he received, made his way to this Mr. Heinberg. Mr. Heinberg refused to admit him until he mentioned his errand, and pushed below the door a letter of recommendation from a Silesian correspondent, describing him as an excellent and steady workman. Wanting such a man, and satisfied by the answers returned that he was what he represented himself, Mr. Heinberg unbolted his door and admitted him. Then, after slipping the bolt into its place, he bade him sit to the fire, brought him a glass of beer, conversed with him for ten minutes, and said, You had better stay here to-night. I'll tell you why afterwards, but now I'll step upstairs and ask my wife whether she can make up a bed for you, and do you mind the door while I'm away? So, saying, he went out of the room. Not one minute had he been gone when there came a gentle knock at the door. It was raining heavily, and being a stranger to the city, not dreaming that in any crowded town such a state of things could exist as really did in this, the young man, without hesitation, admitted the person knocking. He has declared since, but perhaps confounding the feelings gained from better knowledge with the feelings of the moment, that from the moment he drew the bolt he had a misgiving that he had done wrong. A man entered in a horseman's cloak, and so muffled up that the Germanman could discover none of his features. In a low tone the stranger said, Where's Heinberg? Upstairs. Call him down, then. The journeyman went to the door by which Mr. Heinberg had left him, and called, Mr. Heinberg, here's one wanting you. Mr. Heinberg hurt him, for the man could distinctly catch these words, God bless me, has the man opened the door, oh, the traitor, I see it. Upon this he felt more and more consternation, though not knowing why. Just then he heard a sound of feet behind him. On turning round, he beheld three more men in the room. One was fastening the outdoor, one was drawing some arms from a cupboard, and two others were whispering together. He himself was disturbed and perplexed, and felt that all was not right. Such was his confusion that either all the man's faces must have been muffled up, or at least he remembered nothing distinctly but one fierce pair of eyes glaring upon him. Then, before he could look around, came a man from behind and threw a sack over his head, which was drawn tight about his waist, so as to confine his arms, as well as to impede his hearing in part, and his voice altogether. He was then pushed into a room, but previously he had heard a rush upstairs, and words like those of a person exulting, and then a door closed. Once it opened, and he could distinguish the words in one voice, and for that, to which another voice replied, in tones that made his heart quake, I for that, sir. And then the same voice went on rapidly to say, oh, dog, could you hope, at which word the door closed again? Once he thought that he heard a scuffle, and he was sure that he heard the sound of feet, as if rushing from one corner of a room to another. But then all was hushed and still for about six or seven minutes, until a voice close to his ear said, now wait quietly till some persons come in to release you. This will happen within a half an hour. Accordingly, in less than that time, he again heard the sound of feet within the house. His own bandages were liberated, and he was brought to tell his story at the police office. Mr. Heinberg was found in his bedroom. He had died by strangulation, and the cord was still tightened about his neck. During the whole dreadful scene, his youthful wife had been locked in a closet, where she heard or saw nothing. In the second case, the object of vengeance was again an elderly man. Of the ordinary family, all were absent at a country house, except a master and a female servant. She was a woman of courage, and blessed with affirmed nerves, so that she might have been relied on for reporting accurately everything seen or heard. But things took another course. The first warning that she had of the murderer's presence was from their steps and voices already in the hall. She heard her master run hastily into the hall crying out, Lord Jesus! Mary, Mary, save me! The servant resolved to give what aid she could, seized a large poker, and was hurrying to his assistance, when she found that they had nailed up the door of communication at the head of the stairs. What passed after this she could not tell, for when the impulse of intrepid fidelity had been bulked, and she found that her own safety was provided for by means which made it impossible to aid a poor fellow creature who had just invoked her name, the generous hearted creature was overcome by anguish of mind, and sank down on the stair, where she lay, unconscious of all that succeeded, until she found herself raised in the arms of a mob who had entered the house. And how came they to have entered, in a way characteristically dreadful? The night was starlit, the patrols had preambulated the street without noticing anything suspicious, when two-foot passengers who were following in their rear observed a dark-colored stream traversing the causeway. One of them, at the same instant tracing the stream backward with his eyes, observed that it flowed from under the door of Mr. Monser, and dipping his finger in the trickling fluid he held it up to the lamplight, yelling out at the moment, Why, this is blood! It was so indeed, and it was yet warm. The other saw, heard, and like an arrow flew after the horse patrol, then in the act of turning a corner. One cry full of meaning was sufficient for ears full of expectation. The horseman pulled up, wheeled, and in another moment reigned up at Mr. Monser's door. The crowd, gathering like the drifting of snow, supplied implements which soon forced the chains of the door and all other obstacles. But the murderous party had escaped, and all traces of their persons had vanished, as usual. Rarely did any case occur without some peculiarity more or less interesting. In that case which happened on the following night, making the fifth in the series, an impressive incident varied the monotony of horrors. In this case the parties aimed at were two elderly ladies who conducted a female boarding school. None of the pupils had as yet returned to school from their vacation, but two sisters, young girls of thirteen and sixteen, coming from a distance, had stayed at school throughout the Christmas holidays. It was the youngest of these who gave the only evidence of any value, and one which added a new feature of alarm to the existing panic. Thus it was that her testimony was given. On the day before the murder, she and her sister were sitting with the old ladies in a room fronting to the street. The elder ladies were reading the younger one's drawing. Luisa, the youngest, never had her ear inattentive to any slightest sound, and once it struck her that she heard the creaking of a foot upon the stairs. She said nothing, but slipping out of the room, she asserted that the two female servants were in the kitchen, and could not have been absent, that all the doors and windows by which ingress was possible were not only locked, but bolted and barred, a fact that excluded all possibility of invasion by means of false keys. Still she felt perjuated that she had heard the sound of a heavy foot upon the stairs. It was, however, daylight, and this gave her confidence, so that, without communicating her alarm to anybody, she found courage to traverse the house in every direction, and, as nothing was either seen or heard, she concluded that her ears had been too sensitively awake. Yet that night, as she lay in bed, dim terrors assailed her, especially because she considered that, and so large a house, some closet or other might have been overlooked, and, in particular, she did not remember to have examined one or two chests in which a man could have lain concealed. Through the greater part of the night she lay awake, but as one of the town clocks struck four, she dismissed her anxieties and fell asleep. The next day, weary with this unusual watching, she proposed to her sister that they should go to bed earlier than usual. This they did, and on their way upstairs, Louisa happened to think suddenly of a heavy cloak which would improve the coverings of her bed against the severity of the night. The cloak was hanging up in a closet within a closet, both leading off from a large room used as the young lady's dancing school. These closets she had examined on the previous day, and therefore she felt no particular alarm at this moment. The cloak was the first article which met her sight. It was suspended from a hook in the wall, and close to the door. She took it down, but, in doing so, exposed part of the wall and of the floor, which its folds had previously concealed. Turning away hastily the chances were that she had gone without making any discovery. In the act of turning, however, her light fell brightly on a man's foot and leg. Matchless was her presence of mind, having previously been humming in air, she continued to do so. But now came the trial. Her sister was bending her steps to the same closet. If she suffered her to do so, Lothian would stumble on the same discovery and expire of fright. On the other hand, if she gave her a hint, Lothian would either fail to understand her or, gaining but a glimpse of her meaning, would shriek aloud, or by some equally decisive expression convey the fatal news to the assassin that he had been discovered. In this torturing dilemma fear prompted an expedient, which to Lothian appeared madness, and to Lisa herself the act of a civil instinct with blind inspiration. Here, said she, is our dancing room. When shall we all meet and dance again together? Saying which, she commenced a wild dance, whirling her candle around her head until the motion extinguished it. Then, edding round her sister and narrowing circles, she seized Lothian's candle also, blew it out, and then interrupted her own singing to attempt a laugh. But the laugh was hysterical. The darkness, however, favoured her, and seizing her sister's arm she forced her along, whispering, Come, come, come. Lothian could not be so dull as entirely to misunderstand her. She suffered herself to be led up the first flight of stairs, at the head of which was a room looking into the street. In this day would have gained an asylum, for the door had a strong bolt. But, as they were in the last steps of the landing, they could hear the heart breathing and long strides of the murderer ascending behind them. He had watched them through a crevice, and had been satisfied by the hysterical laugh of Luisa that she had seen him. In the darkness he could not follow fast, from ignorance of the localities, until he found himself upon the stairs. Luisa, dragging her sister along, felt strong as with the strength of lunacy, but Lothian hung like a weight of lead upon her. She rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lothian fell. At that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud cluttering ascent. Already he was on the topmost stair. Already he was throwing himself at a bound against the door, when Luisa, having dragged her sister into the room, closed the door and sent the bolt home in the very instant that the murderer's hand came into contact with the handle. Then, from the violence of her emotions, she fell down in a fit with her arm around her sister whom she had saved. How long delaying the state neither ever knew, that two old ladies had rushed upstairs on hearing the tumult. Other persons had been concealed in other parts of the house. The servants found themselves suddenly locked in and were not sorry to be saved from a collision which involved so awful a danger. The old ladies had rushed, side by side, and to the very centre of those who were seeking them. Retreat was impossible. Two persons at least were heard following them upstairs. Something like a shrieking expostulation and counter expostulation went on between the ladies and the murderers. Then came louder voices. Then one heart piercing shriek and then another, and then a slow moaning and a dead silence. Shortly afterwards was heard the first crashing of the door inward by the mob, but the murderers had fled upon the first alarm and, to the astonishment of the servants, had fled upward. Examination, however, explained this. From a window in the roof they had passed to an adjoining house recently left empty, and here, as in other cases, we had proof of how apt people are in the midst of elaborate provisions against remote dangers, to neglect those which are obvious. The reign of terror, it may be supposed, had now reached its acme. The two old ladies were both lying dead at different points of the staircase, and, as usual, no conjecture could be made as to the nature of the offence which they had given, but that the murder was a vindictive one, the usual evidence remained behind in the proofs that no robbery had been attempted. Two new features, however, were now brought forward in this system of horrors, one of which riveted the sense of their insecurity to all families occupying extensive houses, and the other raised ill blood between the city and the university, such as required years to allay. The first arose out of their experience, now first obtained, that these assassins pursued the plan of secreting themselves within the house, where they mediated a murder. All the care, therefore, previously directed to the securing of doors and windows after nightfall, appeared nougatory. The other feature brought to light on this occasion was vouched for by one of the servants who declared that, the moment before the door of the kitchen was fastened upon herself and fellow servant, she saw two men in the hall, one on the point of ascending the stairs, the other making toward the kitchen, that she could not distinguish the faces of either, but that both were dressed in the academic costume belonging to the students of the university. The consequences of such declaration needs scarcely be mentioned. Suspicions settled upon the students, who were more numerous since the general peace, in a much larger proportion military and less select or respectable than here to fore. Still no part of the mystery was cleared up by this discovery. Many of the students were poor enough to feel the temptation that might be offered by any lucrative system of outrage. Jealous and painful collusions were, in the meantime, produced, and during the latter two months of this winter, it may be said that our city exhibited the very anarchy of evil passions. This condition of things lasted until the dawning of another spring. It will be supposed that communications were made to the supreme government of the land, as soon as the murders in our city were understood to be no casual occurrences, but links in a systematic series. Perhaps it might happen from some other business of a higher kind, just then engaging the attention of our governors, that our representations did not make the impressions we had expected. We could not, indeed, complain of absolute neglect from the government. They sent down one or two of their most accomplished police officers, and they suggested some councils, especially that we should examine more strictly into the quality of the miscellaneous population who occupied our large suburb. But they more than hinted that no necessity was seen either for quartering troops upon us, or for arming our local majesty with ample powers. 10. The Avenger, Part III, by Thomas de Quincey This correspondence with the central government occupied the month of March, and, before that time, the bloody system had ceased as abruptly as it began. The new police officer flattered himself that the terror of his name had wrought this effect, but judicious people thought otherwise. All, however, was quiet until the depth of summer, when, by way of hinting to us, perhaps, that the dreadful power which clothed itself with darkness had not expired, but was only reposing from its labours, all at once the chief jailer of the city was missing. He had been in the habit of taking long rides in the forest, his present situation being much of a sinecure. It was on the first of July that he was missed. In riding through the city gates that morning he had mentioned the direction which he meant to pursue, and the last time he was seen alive was in one of the forest avenues, about eight miles from the city, leading to what the pointy had indicated. This jailer was not a man to be regretted on his own account. His life had been a tissue of cruelty and brutal abuse of his powers, in which he had been too much supported by the magistrates, partly on the plea that it was their duty to back their own officers against all complainers, partly also from the necessities created by the turbulent times for a more summary exercise of their magistral authority. No man, therefore, on his own separate account, could more willingly have been spared than this brutal jailer, and it was a general remark that, had the murderous band within our walls swept away this man only, they would have merited the public gratitude as purifiers from a public nuisance. But was it certain that the jailer had died by the same hands as had so deeply afflicted the peace of our city during the winter, or indeed that he had been murdered at all? The forest was too extensive to be surged, and it was possible that he might have met with some fatal accident. His horse had returned to the city gates in the night, and was found there in the morning. Nobody, however, for months could give information about this rider, and it seemed probable that he would not be discovered until the autumn and the winter should again carry the sportsman into every thicket and dingile of the Sylvian tract. One person only seemed to have more knowledge on this subject than others, and that was poor Ferdinand von Haraldstein. He was now a mere ruin of what he had once been, both as to intellect and moral feeling, and I observed him frequently smile when the jailer was mentioned. Wait, he would say, till the leaves begin to drop, then you will see the fine fruit our forest bears. I did not repeat these expressions to anybody except one friend, who agreed with me that the jailer had probably been hanged in some recess of the forest, which some availed with its luxuriant umbrage, and that Ferdinand, constantly wandering in the forest, had just covered the body, but we both acquitted him of having been an accomplice in the murder. Meantime the marriage between Margaret Liebenheim and Maximilian was understood to be drawing near. Yet one thing struck everybody with astonishment. As far as the young people were concerned, nobody could doubt that all was arranged, for never was happiness more perfect than that which seemed to unite them. Margaret was the impersonation of maytime and youthful rapture, even Maximilian in her presence seemed to forget his gloom, and the warm which gnawed at his heart was charmed asleep by the music of her voice and the paradise of her smiles. But until the autumn came, Margaret's grandfather had never ceased to frown upon this connection and to support the pretensions of Ferdinand. The dislike, indeed, seemed reciprocal between him and Maximilian. Each avoided the other's company, and as to the old man, he went so far as to speak sneeringly of Maximilian. Maximilian despised him too heartily to speak of him at all. When he could not avoid meeting him, he treated him with a stern courtesy which distressed Margaret as often as she witnessed it. She felt that her grandfather had been the aggressor, and she felt also that he did injustice to the merits of her lover. But she had a filial tenderness for the old man, as the father of a sainted mother, and on his own account continually making more claims on her pity, as the decay of his memory and a childish fretfulness growing upon him from day to day marked his increasing imbecility. Equally mysterious it seemed that about this time Miss Liebenheim began to receive anonyms letters written in the darkest and most menacing terms. Some of them she showed to me. I could not guess at their drift. Evidently they glanced at Maximilian and bait her beware of connection with him, and dreadful things were insinuated about him. Could these letters be written by Ferdinand? Written they were not, but could they be dictated by him? Much I feared that they were, and the most so for one reason. All at once, and most inexplicably, Margaret's grandfather showed a total change of opinion in his views as to their marriage. Instead of favouring Haraldstein's pretensions, as he had hitherto done, he now threw the feeble weight of his encouragement into Maximilian's scale. Though, from the situation of all the parties, nobody attached any practical importance to the change in Mr. Liebenheim's way of thinking. Nobody? Is that true? No, one person did attach the greatest weight to the change. Poor, ruined Ferdinand. He, so long as there was one person to take his part, so long as the grandfather of Margaret showed countenance to himself, had still felt the situation not utterly desperate. Thus were things situated when in November all the leaves daily blowing off from the woods and leaving there the most secret hounds of the thickets. The body of the jailer was left exposed in the forest, but not, as I and my friend had conjectured, hanged. No, he had died, apparently, by a more horrid death, by that of crucifixion. The tree, a remarkable one, bore upon a part of its trunk this brief, but savage inscription. Th. Jailer. Crucified July 1st, 1816. A great deal of talk went on throughout the city upon this discovery. Nobody uttered one word of regret on account of the wretched jailer. On the contrary, the voice of vengeance, rising up in many a cottage, reached my ears in every direction as I walked abroad. The hatred in itself seemed horrid and un-Christian, and still more so after the man's death. But, though horrid and fiendish for itself, it was much more impressive, considered as the measure and exponent of the damnable oppression which must have existed to produce it. At first, when the absence of the jailer was a recent occurrence, and the presence of the mergers among us was, in consequence, revived to our anxious thoughts, it was an event which few alluded to without fear. But matters were changed now. The jailer had been dead for months, and this interval, during which the murderer's hands had slept, encouraged everybody to hope that the storm had passed over our city, that peace had returned to our halfs, and that henceforth weakness might sleep in safety and innocence without anxiety. Once more we had peace within our walls and tranquillity by our firesides. Again the child went to bed in cheerfulness, and the old man set his prayers in serenity. Confidence was restored, peace was re-established, and once again the sanctity of human life became the rule and the principle for all human hands among us. Great was the joy, the happiness was universal. O heavens, by what a thunderbolt were we awakened from our security. On the night of the 27th of December, half an hour, it might be, after twelve o'clock, an alarm was given that all was not right in the house of Mr. Liebenheim. Vast was the crowd which soon collected in breathless agitation. In two minutes a man who had gone around the back of the house was heard unbearing Mr. Liebenheim's door. He was incapable of uttering a word, but his gestures, as he threw the door open and back into the crowd, were quite enough. In the hall, at the further extremity, and as if arrested in the act of making for the back door, lay the bodies of old Mr. Liebenheim and one of his sisters, an aged widow. On the stair lay another sister, younger and unmarried, but upward of sixty. The hall and lower flight of stairs were floating with blood. Where then was Miss Liebenheim, the granddaughter? That was the universal cry, for she was beloved as generally as she was admired. Had the infernal murderers been devilish enough to break into that temple of innocent and happy life? Everyone asked the question, and everyone held his breath to listen, but for a few moments no one dared to advance, for the silence of the house was ominous. At length someone cried out that Miss Liebenheim had that day gone upon a visit to a friend whose house was forty miles distant in the forest. I replied another, she had settled to go, but I heard that something had stopped her. The suspense was now at its height, and the crowd passed from room to room, but found no traces of Miss Liebenheim. At length they ascended the stair, and in the very first rim, a small closet, or boudoir, lay Margaret, with her dress soiled hideously with blood. The first impression was that she also had been murdered, but on near approach she appeared to be unwounded, and was manifestly alive. Life had not departed, for her breath sent a haste over a mirror, and she was suspended, and she was laboring in some kind of fit. The first act of the crowd was to carry her into the house of a friend on the opposite side of the street, by which time medical assistants had crowded to the spot. The attentions to Miss Liebenheim had naturally deranged the conditions of things in the little room, but not before many people found the time to remark that one of the murderers must have carried her with his bloody hands to the sofa on which she lay, for water had been sprinkled profusely over her face and throat, and water was even placed ready to her hand when she might happen to recover upon a low footstool by the side of the sofa. On the following morning Maximilian, who had been upon a hunting-party in the forest, returned to the city, and immediately learned the news. I did not see him for some hours after, but he then appeared to be thoroughly agitated, for the first time I had known him to be so. In the evening another perplexing piece of intelligence transpired with regard to Miss Liebenheim, which at first afflicted every friend of that young lady. It was that she had been seized with the pains of childbirth and delivered of a son, who, however, being born prematurely, did not live many hours. Scandal, however, was not allowed long to baton upon this imaginary triumph, for within two hours after the circulation of this first rumour followed the second, authenticated, announcing that Maximilian had appeared with the confessor of the Liebenheim family at the residence of the Chief Magistrate, and there produced satisfactory proofs of his marriage with Miss Liebenheim, which had been duly celebrated, though with great secrecy, nearly eight months before. In our city, as in all the cities of our country, clandestine marriages, witnessed, perhaps, by two friends only of the parties, besides the officiating priests, are exceedingly common. In the mere fact, therefore, taken separately, there was nothing to surprise us, but, taken in connection with the general position of the parties, it did surprise us all. Nor could we conjecture the reason for a step apparently so needless, for that Maximilian could have thought at any point of prudence or necessity to secure the hand of Magistrate Liebenheim by a private marriage against a final opposition of her grandfather, nobody who knew the parties, who knew the perfect love which possessed Miss Liebenheim, the growing imbecility of her grandfather, or the utter contempt with which Maximilian regarded him, could for a moment believe. All together, the matter was one of profound mystery. Meantime, it rejoiced me that poor Margaret's name had been thus rescued from the fangs of the scandal-mongers. These harpies had their prey torn from them at the very moment when they were sitting down to the unhellowed banquet. For this I rejoiced, but else there was little subject for rejoicing in anything which concerned poor Margaret. Long she lay in deep insensibility, taking no notice of anything, and apparently unconscious of the revolutions as they succeeded, of morning or evening, light or darkness, yesterday or today. Great was the agitation which convults the heart of Maximilian during this period. He walked up and down, in the cathedral, nearly all day long, and the ravages which anxiety was working in his physical system might be read in his face. People felt an intrusion upon the sanctity of his grief to look at him too narrowly, and the whole town sympathized with his situation. At length a change took place in Margaret, but one which the medical men announced to Maximilian as boating ill for her recovery. The wanderings of her mind did not depart, but they altered their character. She became more agitated. She would start up suddenly and strain her eyesight after some figure which she seemed to see. Then she would apostrifice some person in the most piteous terms, beseeching him with streaming eyes to spare her old grandfather. Look, look, she would cry. Look at his gray hairs. Oh, sir, he's but a child. He does not know what he says, and he will soon be out of the way and in his grave, and very soon, sir, he will give you no more trouble. Then again she would mutter indistinctly for hours together. Sometimes she would cry out frantically and say things which terrified the bystanders, and which the physicians would solemnly caution them how they repeated. Then she would weep and invoke Maximilian to commentate her. But seldom, indeed, did that name pass her lips, that she did not again begin to strain her eyeballs and start up in bed to watch some phantom of her poor, fevered heart, as if it seemed vanishing into some mighty distance. After nearly seven weeks passed in this agitating state, suddenly, on one morning, the earliest and the loveliest of dawning spring, a change was announced to us all as having taken place in Margaret, but it was a change, alas, that ushered in the last great change of all. The conflict which had for so long a period raged within her and overthrown her reason was at an end. The strife was over, and nature was settling into an everlasting rest. In the course of the night she had recovered her senses. When the morning light penetrated through her curtain, she recognized her attendance, made inquiries as to the month and the day of the month, and then, sensible that she could not outlive the day, she requested that her confessor might be summoned. About an hour and a half the confessor remained alone with her. At the end of that time he came out and hastily summoned the attendants, for Margaret, he said, was sinking into a fainting fit. The confessor himself might have passed through many a fit. So much was he changed by the results of this interview. I crossed him coming out of the house. I spoke to him. I called to him. But he heard me not. He saw me not. He saw nobody. Onward he strode to the cathedral, where Maximilian was sure to be found, pacing about upon the graves. Him he ceased by the arm, whispered something into his ear, and then both retired into one of the many sequestered chapels, in which lights are continually burning. There they had some conversation, but not very long. For within five minutes Maximilian strode away to the house in which his young wife was dying. One step seemed to carry him upstairs. The attendants, according to the directions they had received from the physicians, mustered at the head of the stairs to oppose him, but that was idle, before the rites which he held as a lover and a husband, before the still more sacred rites of grief which he carried in his countenance, all the position fled like a dream. There was, besides, a fury in his eye, emotion of his hand wavered them off like summer flies. He entered the room, and once again, for the last time, he was in company with his beloved. What past who could pretend to guess? Something more than two hours had elapsed, during which Margaret had been able to talk occasionally, which was known because at times the attendants heard the sound of Maximilian's voice evidently in tones of reply to something which she had said. At the end of that time a little bell, placed near the bedside, was rung hastily. A fainting fit had seized Margaret, but she recovered almost before her women applied the usual remedies. They lingered, however, a little, looking at the youthful couple with an interest which no restraint availed to check. Their hands were locked together, and in Margaret's eyes they gleamed a farewell light of love which settled upon Maximilian, and seemed to indicate that she was becoming speechless. Just at this moment she made a feeble effort to draw Maximilian toward her. He bent forward and kissed her with an anguish that made the most callous weep, and then he whispered something into her ear, upon which the attendants retired, taking this as a proof that their presence was a hindrance to a free communication. But they heard no more talking, and in less than ten minutes they returned. Maximilian and Margaret still retained their former position. Their hands were fast locked together, the same parting ray of affection, the same farewell light of love was in the eye of Margaret, and still it settled upon Maximilian. But her eyes were beginning to grow dim, mists were rapidly stealing over them. Maximilian, who sat stupefied and like one not in his right mind, now, at the gentle request of the women, resigned his seat for the hands which had clasped his, had already relaxed its hold. The farewell gleam of love had departed. One of the women closed her eyelids, and there fell asleep forever the loveliest flower that our city had reared for generations. The funeral took part on the fourth day after her death. In the morning of that day, from strong affection, having known her from an infant, I begged permission to see the corpse. She was in her coffin, snow-drops and crocuses were laid upon her innocent bosom and roses of that sort which the season allowed over her person. These and other lovely symbols of youth, of springtime and of resurrection caught my eye for the first moment, but in the next it fell upon her face. Mighty God, what a change, what a transfiguration! Still, indeed, there was the same innocent sweetness, still there was something of the same loveliness, the expression still remained, but for the features, all trace of flesh seemed to have vanished, mere outline of bony structure remained, mere pencilings and shadowings of what she had once been. This is, indeed, I exclaimed, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Mixemillion, to the astonishment of everybody, attended the funeral. It was celebrated in the cathedral, all made way for him, and at times he seemed collected, at times he reeled like one who was drunk. He heard as one who hears not, he saw as one in a dream. The whole ceremony went on by torchlight, and toward the close he stood like a pillar, motionless, torpid, frozen. But the great burst of the choir and the mighty Blair ascending from our vast organ at the closing of the grave recalled him to himself, and he strode rapidly homeward. Half an hour later, half an hour after I returned, I was summoned to his bedroom. He was in bed, calm and collected, what he said to me I remember as if it had been yesterday, and the very tone with which he said it, although more than twenty years have passed since then, he began thus. I have not long to live. And when he saw me start, suddenly awakened into a consciousness that perhaps he had taken poison, and meant to intimate as much, he continued, You fancy I have taken poison? No matter whether I have or not. If I have, the poison is such that no antidote will now avail, or if they would, you well know that some griefs are of a kind which leave no opening to any hope. What difference, therefore, can it make, whether I leave this earth today, tomorrow, or the next day? Be assured of this, that whatever I have determined to do is past all power of being affected by human opposition. Occupy yourself not with any fruitless attempts, but call me listen to me, else I know what to do. Seeing a suppressed fury in his eye, nonewithstanding, I saw also some change stealing over his features, as if from some subtle poison beginning to work upon his frame, all struck I consented to listen, and said still, It is well that you do so, for my time is short. Here is my will, legally drawn up, and you will see that I have committed an immense property to your discretion. Here again is a paper still more important in my eyes, it is also testamentary, and binds you to duties which may not be so easy to execute as the disposal of my property. But now listen to something else, which concerns neither of these papers. Promise me in the first place solemnly, that whenever I die, you will see me burge in the same grave as my wife, from whose funeral we are just returned. Promise. I promised. Swear. I swore. Finally, promise me that, when you read the second paper which I have put into your hands, whatsoever you may think of it, you will say nothing, publish nothing to the world until three years shall have passed. I promised. And now farewell for three hours. Come to me again about ten o'clock, and take a glass of wine in ceremony of old times. This he said laughingly, but even then a dark spasm crossed his face. Yet, thinking that this might be the mere working of mental anguish within him, I complied with his desire, and retired. Feeling, however, but little at ease, I devised an excuse for looking in upon him about one hour and a half after I had left him. I knocked gently at his door. There was no answer. I knocked louder. Still no answer. I went in. The light of day was gone, and I could see nothing. But I was alarmed by the utter stillness of the room. I listened earnestly, but not a breath could be heard. I rushed back hastily into the hall full lamp. I returned, I looked in upon this marvel of manly beauty, and the first glance informed me that he and all his splendid endowments had departed for ever. He had died, probably, soon after I left him, and had dismissed me from some growing instinct which informed him that his last agonies were at hand. I took up his two testamentary documents, both were addressed in the shape of letters to myself. The first was a rapid, though distinct, appropriation of his enormous property. General rules were laid down, upon which the property was to be distributed, but the details were left to my discretion, and to the guidance of circumstances as they should happen to emerge from the various inquiries which it would become necessary to set on foot. This first document I soon laid aside, both because I found that its provisions were dependent for their meaning upon the second, and because to this second document I looked with confidence for a solution of many mysteries, of the profound sadness which had, from the first of my acquaintance with him, possessed a man so gorgeously endowed as the favorite of nature and fortune, of his motives for huddling up in a clandestine manner, that connection which formed the glory of his life, and possibly, but then I hesitated, of the late, unintelligible murders which still lay under as profound a cloud as ever. Much of this would be unveiled, all might be, and there and then, with the corpse lying beside me of the gifted and mysterious writer, I seated myself and read the following statement. March 26, 1817 My trial is finished, my conscience, my duty, my honor are liberated, my warfare is accomplished. Margaret, my innocent young wife, I have seen for the last time, her the crown that might have been of my earthly felicity, her the one temptation to put aside the bitter cup which awaited me, her the soul seductress, oh innocent seductress, from the stern duties which my fate had imposed upon me, her, even her, I have sacrificed. Before I go, partly less the innocent should be brought into question for acts almost exclusively mine, but still more, less the lesson, and the warning which God, by my hand, has written in blood upon your guilty walls, should perish for want of its authentic exposition, hear my last dying avowal, that the murders which have desolated so many families within our walls, and made the household hearth no sanctuary, age no charter of protection, are all due originally to my head, if not always to my hand, as the minister of a dreadful retribution. That account of my history, and my prospects, which you receive from the Russian diplomatist, among some errors of little importance, is essentially correct. My father was not so immediately connected with English blood as is there represented. However, it is true that he claimed descent from an English family of even higher distinction than that which is assigned in the Russian statement. He was proud of his English descent, and the more so as the war with revolutionary France brought out more prominently than ever the moral and civil grandeur of England. This pride was generous, but it was impredent in his situation. His immediate progenitors had been settled in Italy, at Rome first, but later at Milan, and his whole property, large and scattered, came by the progress of revolution to stand under French domination. Many spoliation he suffered, but still he was too rich to be seriously injured. But he foresaw, in the progress of events, still greater perils menacing his most capital resources. Many of the states or princes in Italy were deeply in his depth, and in the great convulgence which threatened his country he saw that both the contending parties would find a colourable excuse for absorbing themselves from engagements which pressed unpleasantly upon their finances. In disembarrassment he formed an intimacy with a French officer of high rank and high principal. My father's friend saw his danger and advised him to enter the French service. In his younger days my father had served extensively under many princes and had found in every other military service a spirit of honour governing the conduct of the officers. Here only, and for the first time, he found ruffian manners and universal rapacity. He could not draw his sword in company with such men, knowing such a cause, but at length, under the pressure of necessity, he accepted, or rather bought with an immense bribe, the place of a commissary to the French forces in Italy. With this one resource, eventually he succeeded in making good the whole of his public claims upon the Italian states. The vast sums he remitted, through various channels to England, where he became proprietor in the funds of an immense amount. Incautiously, however, something of this transpired, and the result was doubly unfortunate, for while his intentions were thus made known as finally pointing to England, which of itself made him an object of hatred and suspicion, it also diminished his means of bribery. These considerations, along with another, made some French officers of high rank and influence the bitter enemies of my father. My mother, whom he had married when holding a Brigadier General's commission in the Austrian service, was, by birth and by religion, a Jewess. She was of exquisite beauty, and had been sought in more genetic marriage by an Archduke of the Austrian family. But she had relied upon this plea that hers was the purest and noblest bloods among all Jewish families, that her family traced themselves by tradition and a vast series of attestations under the hands of the Jewish high priests, to the Maccabees, and to the royal houses of Judea, and for her it would be a degradation to accept even of a sovereign prince on the terms of such marriage. This was no vain pretension of instantaneous vanity. It was one which had been admitted as valid for time immemorial in Transylvania and adjacent countries, where my mother's family were rich and honoured, and took their seat among the dignitaries of the land. The French officers I have alluded to, without capacity for anything so dignified as a deep passion, but merely in pursuit of a vagrant fancy that would, on the next day, have given place to another equally fleeting, had dared to insult my mother with proposals the most licentious, proposals as much below her rank and birth as, at any rate, they would have been below her dignity of mind and her purity. These she had communicated to my father, who bitterly resented the chains of subordination which tied up his hands from avenging his injuries. Still his eye told a tale which his superiors could brook as little as they could the disdainful neglect of his wife. More than one had been concerned in the injuries to my father and mother. More than one were interested in obtaining revenge. Things could be done in German towns, and by favour of old German laws or usages, which even in France could not have been tolerated. This my father's enemies knew well. But this my father also knew, and he endeavored to lay down his office of commissary. That, however, was a favour which he could not obtain. He was compelled to serve on the German campaign then commencing, and on the subsequent one of Friedland and Ehlau. Here he was caught in some one of the snares laid for him. First treponed, internecked which violated some rule of the service, and then provoked into a breach of the discipline against the general officer who had thus trippened him. Now was the long sought opportunity gained, and in that very court of Germany best fitted for improving it. My father was thrown into prison in your city, subjected to the atrocious oppression of your jailer and the more detestable oppression of your local laws. The charges against him were thought even to affect his life, and he was humbled into suing for permission to send for his wife and children. Already to his proud spirit it was punishment enough that he should be reduced to sue for favour to one of his bitterest foes. But it was no part of their plan to refuse that. By way of expediting my mother's arrival, a military courier, with every facility for the journey, was forwarded to her without delay. My mother, her two daughters, and myself, were then residing in Venice. I had, through the aid of my father's connections in Austria, been appointed to the Imperial Service, and held a high commission for my age. But on my father's marching northward with a French army I had been recalled as an indispensable support to my mother. Not that my years could have made me such, for I had barely accomplished my twelfth year, but my premature growth and my military station had given me considerable knowledge of the world and presence of mind. Our journey I pass over, but as I approach your city, that's a pulchre of honour and happiness to my poor family, my heart beats with frantic emotions. Never do I see that venerable dome of your minister from the forest, but I curse its form, which reminds me of what we then surveyed for many a mile as we traversed the forest. For leagues before we approached the city, this object lay before us in relief upon the frosty blue sky, and still it seemed never to increase. Such was the complaint of my little sister Marian. Most innocent child would that it never had increased for thy eyes, but remained forever at a distance. That same hour began the series of monstrous indignities, which terminated the career of my ill-fated family. As we drew up to the city gates, the officer who inspected the passports, finding my mother and sisters described as juicers, which in my mother's ears, reared in a region where the Jews are not dishonoured, always sounded a title of distinction, summoned a subordinate agent who in coarse terms demanded his toll. We presumed this to be a road tax for the carriage and horses, but we were quickly undeceived. A small sum was demanded for each of my sisters and my mother, as for so many had of cattle. I, fancying some mistake, spoke to the man temperately, and to do him justice he did not seem desirous of insulting us, but he produced a printed board, on which, along with the vilest animals, Jews and juicers were rated at so much ahead. While we were debating the point, the officers of the gate were a sneering smile upon their faces. The postillions were laughing together, and this too, in the presence of three creatures whose exquisite beauty in different styles, agreeably to their different ages, would have caused noblemen to have fallen down and worshipped. My mother, who had never yet met with any flagrant result on account of her national distinctions, was too much shocked to be capable of speaking. I whispered to her a few words, recalling her to her native dignity of mind, paid the money, and we drove to the prison. But the hour was passed at which we could be admitted, and, as juicers, my mother and sisters could not be allowed to stay in the city. They were to go into the Jewish quarter, a part of the suburb set apart for Jews, in which it was scarcely possible to obtain a lodging tolerably clean. My father, on the next day, we found, to our horror, at the point of death. To my mother he did not tell the worst of what he had endured. To me he told that, driven to madness by the insults offered to him, he had upbraided the court-martial, which their corrupt propensities, and had even mentioned that overtures had been made to him for quashing the proceedings in return for a sum of two millions of francs, and that his sole reason for not entertaining the proposal was his distrust of those who made it. They would have taken my money, he said, and then found a pretext for putting me to death that I might tell no secrets. This was too near the truth to be tolerated. In concert with the local authorities, the military enemies of my father conspired against him. Witnesses were so borned, and, finally, under some antiquated law of the place, he was subjected, in secret, to a mode of torture which still lingers in the east of Europe.