 Part 2 of the Incantation of Salok and Keelabery This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Read by Shulifa Malikyem. Salok and Keelabery, edited by Julian Harthorne The Incantation by Edward Boerleiden Part 2 Chapter 8 One hour passed away. The faggots and the decauldron burned clear in the sullen, sultry air. The materials within began to seize, and their colour, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale rose hue. From time to time the veiled woman replenished the fire. After she had done so, receding herself close by the pyre, was a hat bowed over her knees, and a face hid under her veil. The light and the lambs, and along the ring of the triangles, now began to pale. I resupplied the nutriment from the crystal vessel. As yet, nothing strange started my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the circle. Nothing audible saved at a distance, some musical wheeler-click of the locusts, and farther still, in the forest, the howl of the wild dogs said never bark. Nothing visible but the trees and the mountain range girding the plains, silvered by the moon, and the arch of the cavern, the flush of wild blooms on their sides, and the gleam of dry bones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom. The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the side of Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the cauldron, when I felt the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and looking up, it seemed as if all the plains beyond the circle were heaving like the swell of the sea, and as if in the air itself there was a perceptible tremor. I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder, and whispered, To me, earth and air seem to vibrate. Do they seem to vibrate to you? I know not, I care not, he answered impacitously. The essence is bursting the shell that confined it. Here are my air and my earth. Trouble me not, look to the circle, feed the lambs if they fail. I passed by the field woman as I walked toward a place in the ring in which the flame was waning dim, and I whispered to her the same question which I had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly around and answered, So it is before the invisible made themselves visible. Did I not bid him for beer? Her head again drooped on her breast, and her watch was again fixed on the fire. I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish his light where it waned, As I did so, on my arm, which is stretched somewhat beyond the line of the ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity. The arm fell to my side numb, denervelous, and from my hand dropped, but within the ring the vessel that contained the fluid. Recovering my surprise on my stun, hastily with the other hand I cut off the vessel. Some of the scanty liquid was already spilled on the sword, and I saw with the thrill of dismay that contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference with which I had first undertaken my charge, how a smaller supply was now left. I went back to Margrave and taught him of the shock and of its consequence in the waste of the liquid. Beware, said he, that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the foot, pass a verge of the ring, and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted, reserve all that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer lamps. See how the grant work advances, how the hues in the cauldron are glowing blood red through the film on the surface. And now four hours of the six were gone. My arm had gradually recovered its strength. Ninth of the ring, nor the lamps had again required replenishing. Perhaps the light was exhausted less quickly, as it was no longer to be exposed to the rays of the intense Australian moon. Clouds had gathered over the sky, and though the moon gleamed at times in the gaps that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy and dulled. The locusts no longer were heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in the forest. Out of the circle the stillness was profound. And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast eye, drew nearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground to at the height of some lofty giant. Its gaze riveted mine, my blood curled in the blaze from its angry bow, and now as it advanced larger and larger on the rise, as if of giant in its strain, grew out from the space in its rear. Numbers and numbers, like the spare heads of some eastern army, seen afar by pale waters of Batman's doom to the dust. My voice long refused to utter as to my awe. At length, at burst force, it shrill and loud. Look, look, those terrible eyes, legions and legions, and hog the trump of numbeless feet. They are not seen, but the hollows of earth echo the sound of their march. Margrave, more than ever intent on the cordon, in which from time to time he kept dropping powders or recenses, drawn forth from his coffer, looked up, defyingly, fiercely. Ye come, he said in a low mutter, his once mighty voice, sounding hollow and laboring, but fearless and firm. Ye come, not a conker, vain rebels. Ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb, where my spell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, the Chaldee. Earth and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still I remember the war song that summons them up to confront you. Aisha! Aisha, recall the wild troth that we pledged among the roses. Recall the dread bond by which we united our sway over hosts, that ye town thee as queen, though my sceptre is broken, my diadem raft from my brows. The field woman rose at this adoration. Her veil now was withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself flushed, as was the rosy bloom of youth, the grand beauty of a softened face. It was seen, detached, as it were, from her dark mantlet's form, seen through the mist of the vapours which rose from the cauldron, framing it round like the clouds that are yielding appears by the light of the evening star. Through the haze of the vapour came her voice, more musical, more plaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender. Still in a foreign tongue, the words are known to me, and yet their sons, perhaps, made intelligible by the laugh which has one common language, and one common look to all who have laughed. The laugh unmistakably heard in the loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face. A moment or so more, and she had come round from the opposite side of the fire-pile, and banding over Margrave's upturned brown, kissed it quietly, solemnly. And then her countenance grew fierce, her crest rose erect, it was a line as protecting her young. She stretched forth her arm from the black mantlet, a sword the pale from that now again bent over the cauldron, stretched it toward the haunted and hollow-sounding space beyond, the gesture of one whose right hand has a sway of the scepter. And then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant, not loud yet far reaching, so thrilling, so sweet, and yet so solemn that I could at once comprehend how legend united of all the spell of enchantment with the power of song. All that I recalled of the effects, which in the former time Margrave's strange chants had produced on the ear that they ravished, and the thoughts they confused, was but as a wild bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth and the art and the soul of the singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthrall all the tribes of creation, so the language it used for their charm might to them as to me be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard from behind sounds like those I had heard in the spaces before me, the tramp of invisible feet, the war of invisible wings, as if armies were marching to aid against armies in march to destroy. Look not in front nor around, said Asia. Look like him on the cauldron below. The circle and the lambs are yet bright. I will tell you when the light again fails. I dropped my eyes on the cauldron. See! whispered Margrave. The sparkles at last begin to arise, the rose used to deepen. Signs that we near the last process. Chapter 9 The fifth hour had passed away when Asia said to me, Lord, the circle is fading. The lambs grow dim. Look now without fear on the space beyond, the eyes that abound the hour again lost in air, as lightnings that flee back into cloud. I looked up, and the spectres had vanished. The sky was tinged with sulfurous hues, serratten the black intermixed. I replenished with the lambs and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully. But when I came to the sixth lamb, I struck on the vessel that Fatland was left. In a vagued dismay, I now looked round the half of the white circle in rear of the two bended figures intent on the cauldron. All along that disk, the light was already broken, here and there flickering up, here and there dying down, the six lambs and that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, a star shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading shine in that half of the magical ring, which daunted my eye, and quickened with terror, the pulse of my heart. The bushland beyond was on fire. From the background of the forest rose a flame and the smoke. It's a smoke there, still half smothering the flame. But along with the white of the grasses and herbage, between the verge of the forest and the bat of the water creek just below, the raised platform from which I beheld the dread conflagration, the fire was advancing, wave upon wave, clear and red against the columns of rock behind, as a rush of a flood threw the mists of some albed crowned with lightnings. Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by the mind I had steered against far rarer portents of nature, I cared no more for the lambs and the circle. Hurrying back to Aisha, I exclaimed, the phantoms have gone from the spaces in front, but what incantational spell can arrest a red march of the foe, speeding on than the rear? While we gaze on a cauldron of life behind his unheeded, behold the destroyer! Aisha looked and made no reply, but as by involuntary instinct bowed her majestic head, then rearing it erect, blazed herself yet more immediately before the wasted form of the young magician. He still, bending over the cauldron, and hearing me nod in the absorption hope of his watch, blazed herself before him as a bird whose first care is a fledgling. As we too there stood, fronting with the deluge of fire, we heard my grave behind as murmuring low, see the bubbles of light, how they sparkle and dance, I shall live, I shall live! And his words scarcely died in our ears, before crash upon crash came the fall of the age, long trees in the forest, and nearer, all nearest, through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the sapons, the scream of the birds, and the baller and tramp of the herds, plunging wild through debilary red of their pastures. Aisha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched him reluctant and struggling from his watch over the seething cauldron. In rebuke of his angry exclamations, she pointed to the march of the fire, spoke in sorrowful tones, a few words in her own language, then, appealing to me in English, said, I tell him that here the spirit who opposes have summoned a foe that is deaf to my voice, and exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with the swell of a voice which drowned all the discourse of terror and agony since forth from the flag of sun burning below, and this which, whom I trusted, is a vile slave and a posture more desiring my death than my life, she thinks that in life I should scorn and forsake her, that in death I should die in her arms, sorcerous, ne'er-vawned, are thou useless and powerless now when I need thee most. Go, let the world be one funeral pyre, what to me is a world, my world is my life, that knows that my last hope is here, that all the strengths left me this night will die down, like the lamps in the circle, unless the Alexia restore it. Bald friend, spawned that sorcerous way, ours yet ere this flame can sail us, the few minutes more and life to your liliand and me. Thus, having said, Margrave turned from us and cast into the cauldron the last essence yet left in his empty coffer. Aisha silently drew her black veil over her face and turned with the being she laughed from the terror he scorned to share the hope that he cherished. Thus, left alone, with my reason disenthralled, disenchanted, I surveyed more calmly the extent of the actual peril with which we were threatened, and the peril seemed less, so surveyed. It is true all the bush-land behind almost up to the bed of the creek was on fire, but the grasses, through which the flame spread so rapidly, seized at the opposite march of the creek. Watery pools were still at intervals left in the bed of the creek, shining tremolars like waves of fire in the glare reflected from the burning land, and even where the water failed, the stony cause of the exhausted rivulet was a barrier against a march of the conflagration. Thus, unless the wind now still should rise and waft some sparks to the parched combustible hermit immediately round us, we were safe from the fire, and our work might yet be achieved. I whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came. Thanks to thou, she answered without raising her mournful head, that the agencies of nature are the movements of chance. The spirits, I evoked to his aid, are leaked with a host, that a sail, a mightier than I am, has doomed him. Scares he had shouted these words before my grave exclaimed, Behold how the rose of the alchemist's dream enlarges its blooms from the falls of its petals. I shall live, I shall live! I looked, and the liquid which glowed in the cordon had now taken a splendour that mocked all comparisons wrote from the luster of gems. In its prevalent colour it had indeed the dazzle and flesh of the ruby, but out from the miles of the molten red broke corrosations of all prismal hues, shooting, shifting, and a play that made the wavelets themselves seem living things, sensible of their joy. No longer was there scum of film upon the surface, only ever and none alight rosy vapour floating up, and quickloss in the haggard heavy sulfurous air, hot with conflagration rushing toward us from behind. And these corrosations formed on the surface of the molten ruby literally the shape of a rose. Its leaves may distinct them their outlines by sparks of emerald and diamonds and sapphire. Even while gazing on this animated leku-tuluster, a bouillon delight seemed envious into my senses. All terrors conceived before were annulled. The phantoms, whose armies had filled the white spaces in front were forgotten. The crash of the forest behind was unheard. And the reflection of that glory, margraves one cheek, seemed already restored to the radiance at war when I saw it first in the framework of blooms. As I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched my own. Hush! whispered Ayesha, from the black veil against which the rays of the cauldron fell blunt and absorbed into dark. Behind us, the light of the circle is extinct, but there we are guarded from all save, the brutal and soulless esturoyas. But before, but before, see two of the lamps have died out, see the blank of the gap in the ring, guard that breach, there the demons will enter. Not a drop is there left in this vessel by which to replenish the lamps on the ring. Advance then, now has still the light of the soul and the demons may recall before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless. If not, real lost, as it is, one is doomed. Thus adjoined, silently, involuntarily, I passed from the veered woman's side over the seer-lines on the turf which had been traced by the triangles of light long since extinguished and toward the verge of the circle. As I advanced, overhead rusted dark cloud of wings, birds dislodged from the forest on fire and screaming in dissonant terror as they flew toward the farthest most mountains. Closed by my feet, hissed and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing covets and glancing through the ring unscared by its waning lambs, all undulating by me, bright-eyed and hissing, all made inocious by fear. Even the terrible death-adder, which I trampled on as I hold it at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite but grabbed harmless away. I hold it at the gap between the two dead lambs and bowed my head to look again into the crystal vessel. Where there indeed no lingering drops yet left it better recruit the lambs for some priceless minutes more. As I thus stood right into the gap between the two dead lambs, strode a gigantic foot. All the rest of the form was unseen. Only, as volume after volume of smoke poured on from the burning land behind, it seemed as if one great column of paper eddying round settled itself aloft from the circle that out from that column strode the giant foot. And as strode the foot so wizard came like the sound of its shred, a roll of matted thunder. I recoiled with cry that rang loud through the lurid air. Courage! said the voice of Ayesha, trembling soul, yet not an inch to the demon. At the charm, the wonderful charm and the tone of the veiled woman's voice, my well seemed to take a force more sublime than its own. I folded my arms on my breast and stood as if rooted to the spot, confronting the column of smoke and the stride of the giant foot. And the foot halted, mute. Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice, it was my grace. The last hour expires, the work is accomplished. Come, come, aid me to take the cauldron from the fire and quick, or a drop may be wasted in vapor. The alexia of life from the cauldron. At that cry, I receded and the foot advanced. And at that moment, suddenly, unaware from behind, I was stricken down. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoos and glassing horns. The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures, had rushed over the bat of the water-course, scaled the slopes of the banks. Snorting and bellowing, they lunged at their blind way to the mountains. One cry alone, more wild than their own savage blare, pierced at the reek through which the brood hurricane swept. At that cry for wrath and despair, I struggled to rise again, dashed to the earth by the hoos and the horns. But was it a dreamlike deceit of my reeling senses, or did I see that giant foot stride past through the closed-seerage ranks of the maddening herds? Did I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of animal terror, the roar of low thunder, which followed the stride of that foot? Chapter 10 When my sense had recovered a shock, and my eyes looked disly round, the charge of the beast had swept by, and of all the wild tribes, which had invaded the magical circle, the only lingerer was a brown death-adder, coiled close by a despot where my head had rested. Beside the extinguished lambs, which to whose had confusedly scattered, the fire, arrested by the water-cours, had consumed the grasses that fadded, and there the plains stretched black and desert as a flagrium's field of the poet's hell. The fire still raged in the forest beyond, white flames soaring up from the trunks of the tallest trees and forming through the sullen dark of the smoke-rack, and innumerable pillars of fire like the halls in the city of finds. Gathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the terrible pump of the lurid forest, and looked fearfully down on the hoof-trumble sword for my two companions. I saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still banding as I had seen it last. I saw pale hand freebly grasping the rim of the magical cordon, which lay hurled down from its dry-pot by the rush of the beasts, yards away from the dim fading embers of the scattered wood-pire. I saw the faint writhings of a frail, wasted frame over which a veiled woman was banding. I saw, as I moved with bruised limbs to the place close by the lips of the dying magician, the flash of the ruby-like essence spilled on the sword, and meteor-like, sparkling up from the torn tufts of herbage. I now reached my grave-side, banding over him as a veiled woman bent, and as I saw gently to raise him, he turned his face, fiercely faltering out, touch me not, rob me not, you share with me, never, never! These glorious drops are all mine, die all else, I will live, I will live, rising himself from my pitting arms. He plunged his face amidst the beautiful, playful flame of the essence, as if to love the Alexia with lips scorched away from its intolerable burning. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he fell back, his face upturned to mine, and on that face, unmistakably, reigned death. Then Ayesha, tenderly, silently, drew his young head to her lap, and it vanished from my side behind her black veil. I knelt beside her, murmuring some tried words of comfort, but she heeded me not, rocking herself to and through as a mother who credils a child to sleep. Soon, the fast flickering sparkles of the lost Alexia died out on the grass, and with their last sportive diamond-like tremble of light, up in all the suddenness of Australian day, rose the sun, lifting himself royally above the mountaintops, and fronting the meaner blades of the forest as young king Francis rebels. And as it there, where the bushfires had ravaged, all was a desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all was a garden. A far, at the foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing, the cranes flocking back to the pools renewed the strange grays of their gambles, and the great kingfisher, whose laugh half in mirth, half in mockery, leads a choir that welcomed them on, which a Europe's night, a light had balled on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races extinct before, so helpless through instinct, so royal through soul, rose man. But there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir had wasted its verges, there the herb had already had a fresher of verger, which, amid the dullest wood-rounded, was like an oasis of green in the desert. And there, wild flowers, whose chill hues of the eye would have scarcely distinguished the day before, now glittered forth in blooms of unfamiliar beauty. Toward that spot were retracted myriads of happy insects, whose hum of intense joy was musically loud. But the form of the life-seeking sorcerer lay rigid and stark, blind to the bloom of the white flowers, deaf to the glee of the insects, one hand still resting heavily on the rim of the emptied cauldron, and the vase still hid behind the black veil. What! the one rose elixir, sought with such hope, a well-nigh achieved through such dread, bleeding back to the earth from which its material was drawn to give bloom indeed, but to herbs, joy indeed, but to insects. And now, in the flesh of the sun, slowly wound up the slopes that led to the circle, the same barbaric procession which had sunk into the valley under the ray of the moon. The armed men came first, stalwart and tall, with their vests rave with crimson and golden lace, their weapons gaily gleaming with holiday silver. After them, the black litter. As if they came to the place, Ayesha, not raising her head, spoke to them in her own eastern tongue. A wail was her answer. The armed men bounded forward, the bearers left the litter. All gathered round the dead form with the vase concealed under the black veil, all knelt, and all whipped. Far in the distance, at the foot of the blue mountains, a crowd of the savage natives had risen up as if from the earth, they stood motionless, leaning on their clubs and spears, and looking towards the spot on which we were, where among the mourners for the mysterious child of mysterious nature. And still, in the herbage, hummed the small insects, and still, from the cavern, laughed the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha, farewell, your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living. You are now with your own people, they may console you, say if I can assist. There is no consolation for me. What mourner can be consoled if the dead die for ever? Nothing for him is left, but a grave, that grave shall be in the land where the song of Ayesha's first lulled him to sleep. Thou, assist me, thou, the wise men of Europe, from me ask assistance, what road will thou take to thy home? There is but one road known to me through the maze of the solitude, said to which we took to this upland, and that the road death lurks, and awaits thee, couldst thou think that if the grand secret of life had been won, he, who's had a rest on my lap, would have yielded the one paddy drop of the essence which had felled from his door of life but a moment? Me, who so loved and so cherished him, me, he would have doomed to the pitiless court of my servant, this strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hair-breath of the span of his being. But what matters to me his crime, or his madness, I loved him, I loved him. She bowed her veil, had lower and lower, perhaps under the veil her lips kissed the lips of the dead, then she said, whisperingly, Jew meant the wrangler, whose word never failed to his master, whose brain never slipped from his snare, awaits thy step on the road to thy home, but thy death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved, and thou has had pity for him who took but thine aid to design thy destruction, as life is lost, thine is saved. She spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret. She spoke in the language unknown, a few murmured words to his warzy attendance. Then the armed men still weeping rose and made a dumb sign to me to go with them. I understood by the sign that Aisha told them to guard me on my way, but she gave no reply to my part in things. CHAPTER 11 I descended into the valley, the armed men followed. The path, on that side of water-course, not reached by the flames, ran through meadows still green, or remits grows, still unscathed. As a turning in the way brought in front of my side the blazer had left behind, the black litter creeping down the descent with its curtains closed and the veiled woman walking by its side. But soon the funeral procession was lost to my eyes, and the thoughts that had roused were erased. The waves in man's brain are like those of the sea, rushing on, rushing of the racks of the vessels that rode on their surface to sink after storm in their deeps. One thought cast forth into the future now massed all in the past, was Lillian living still. Absorbed in the gloom of that thought, hurried on by the goat that my heart in its torches and patience gave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow strife of the armed men, and made way between the place I had left and the home which I spent to, came far in advance of my guards into the thicket in which the bushmen had started up in my path on the night that Lillian had watched for my coming. The earth at my feet was wrought with creeping plants and many coloured flowers. The sky overhead was half-hit by motionless pines. Suddenly, with the crawling out from the herb or dropping down from the trees, by my side stood the white-robed and skeletoned form, aetis attendant, the strangler. I sprang from him, shuddering, then hauled it and faced him. The head is creatureed, cracked toward me, gringing and thawning, making signs of humble goodwill and servile abeasance. Again I recoiled, restfully loathingly turned my face homeward and fled on. I thought I had baffled his chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket, he dropped from a bow in my path closed behind me. Before I could turn, some dark muffling substance fell between my side and the sun, and I felt a fierce strain at my throat. But the wards of Ayesha had warned me. With one rapid hand I seized the news before it could tighten too closely. With the other I tore the bandage away from my eyes, and wielding wrath on the darsedly foe, struck him down with one span of my foot. His hand, as he fell, relaxed its hold on the news. I freed my throat from the knot and sprang from the cobs into the broad sunlit plain. I saw no more of the armed men of the strangler. Panting and breathless, I paused at last before the fans, fragrant with blossoms, that divided my home from the solitude. The windows of Lillian's room were darkened. All within the house seemed still. Darkened and silenced home, with the light and sounds of the joke and day all around it. Was there yet hope in the universe for me? All to which I had trusted hope had broken down. The anchors I had forged for her hold in the bats of the ocean, her stay from the drifts of the storm had snapped like the reed to which pierce the side, that leans on the barb of their points, and confides in the strengths of their stems. No hope in the baffled resources of recognized knowledge. No hope in the daring adventures of mine in the regions unknown, vain alike in the calm law of the practised physician and the magical art of the fated enchanter. I had fled from the commonplace teachings of nature to explore in her shadowland marvels at variant with reasons. Made brave by the grandeur of love I had opposed, without calling, the strightest demon, and my hope when fruition seemed nearest had been trodden into dust by the hooves of the beast. And yet, all the while I had scorned as a dream more wild than the word of a sorcerer the hope that the old man and the child, the wise and the ignorant, took from their source as inborn. Man and fine had alike failed a mind, not ignoble, not skillous, not objective raven. Alike failed a heart, not feeble and selfish, not dead to the hero's devotion, willing to shred every drop of its blood for something more dear than an animal's life for itself. What remained? What remained for man's hope? Man's mind and man's heart, thus exhausting the all, was no other result but despair. What remained, the mystery of mysteries, so clear to the sunrise of childhood, the sunset of age, only dimmed by the clouds round the noon of our manhood, where yet was hope found in the soul in its everyday impulse to supplicate comfort and light from the giver of soul wherever the heart is afflicted till mind is obscured. Then the words of Aisha rushed over me, what mourner can be consoled if the dead die for ever? Through every pulse of my frame throb that dread question, all nature around seemed to murmur it. And suddenly, as by a flash from heaven, the grand truth of Faber's grand reasoning shone on me and lighted up all within and without. Man alone of all earthly creatures asks, can the dead die for ever? And the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man. No instinct has given him vain. And born with the instinct of soul is the instinct that leads the soul from the seen to the unseen, from time to eternity, from the torrent that foams toward the ocean of death to the sores of its stream barrel off from the ocean. Know thyself, said the pithian of old, that free-sept descended from heaven. Know thyself, is that magazine wise, if so, know thyself, but never yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what you acknowledged, the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged and elumed and exalted. I prayed, all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, with its pride and presumption and folly, grew distinct as a form of a panitent, kneeling for pardon before setting forth on the pilgrimage a vow to a shrine. And sure now, in the deeps of a soul first revealed to myself that the dead do not die forever, my human love soared beyond its brief trial of terror and sorrow. Daring not to ask from heaven's wisdom that Lilian, for my sake, might not yet pass away from the earth, I prayed that my soul might be fitted to bear with submission whatever my maker might ordain, and if surviving her, without whom no beam from young material sun could ever warm into a joy and morrow in human life, so to guide my steps that they might rejoin her at last and in rejoining regain forever. How trivial now became the weird riddle that, a little while before, had been clothed in so solemn a norm. What mattered to the vast interest involved the unclear recognition of soul and hereafter, whether or not my bodily sense for a moment obscured the face of the nature I should one day behold as a spirit? Doubtless the sights and the sounds which had haunted the last gloomy night, the calm reason of favour would strip of the magical seemings, the eyes in the space and the foot in the circle might be those of no terrible demons, but of the wilds-suffered children whom I had seen halting, curious and mute in the light of the morning. The tremor of the ground, if not as heretofore explicable by the illusory impression of my own treacherous senses, might be but the natural effect of elements struggling yet under a soil and mistakenly charred by volcanoes. The luminous atoms, dissolved in the cordon, might as little be fraught with the vital elixir as are the splendours of nafta-phosphor. As it was, the weird ride had no magic result. The magician was not rend lim from lim by the finds. My causes, as natural as ever extinguished life-sparks in the frail lamp of clay, he had died out aside under the black veil. What a matter henceforth to faith, in its far-grander questions and answers, was a reason in favour or fancy. In me, supplied the more probable gas at hieroglyph, which, if construed a ride, was but a word of small mark in the mystical language of nature. If all the arts of enchantment, recorded by favour, were retested by facts, which his sages were forced to acknowledge, sages would sooner or later find some course for such portents, not supernatural. But what sage, without course supernatural, both without and within him, can gas at the wonders he views in the growth of a blade of grass or the tins on an insect's wing? Whatever art men can achieve in his bogus through time, man's reason in time can suffice to explain. But the wonders of God, these belong to the infinite, and these, o immortal, will but develop new wonder on wonder, so thy sight be his spirits, and thy leisure to trek and to solve an eternity. As I raised my face from my clasp's hands, my eyes fell upon a form sending him the open doorway. There, but on the night in which Lillian's long struggle for reason and life had begun, the luminous shadow had been beheld in the doubtful light of a dying moon, and yet hazy dawn. There, on the threshold, gathering round her bright locks at the aural of the glorious sun, stood Amy, the blessed child. And as I gazed, drawing nearer and nearer to the silenced house, that image of peace on its threshold, I felt that hope met me at the door. Hope, the child's steadfast eyes, hope in the child's welcoming smile. I was at watch for you, whispered Amy, all is well. She lives still. She lives. Thank God! Thank God! She lives. She will recover, said another voice as my head sunk on Faber's shoulder. For some hours in the night her sleep was disturbed, convulsed. I feared then the worst. Suddenly, just before the dawn, she called out aloud still in sleep. The cold and dark shadow had passed away from me and from Alan, passed away from us both forever. And from that moment the fever left her. The breathing became soft, the pulse steady, and the collar still gradually back to her cheek. The crisis is past. Nature's benign disposer has permitted nature to restore your life's gentler partner, heart to heart, mind to mind. And soul to soul, I cried to my solemn joy, above as below, soul to soul. Then, at the sight of Faber, the child took me by the hand and let me up the stairs into Lillian's room. Again those dear arms close around me in wife-like and holy love, and those true lips kissed away my tears, even as now, at the distance of years from the Tappymourne, while I write the last words of this strange story, the same faithful arms close around me, the same tender lips kiss away my tears. End of part 2 of the Incantation by Edward Bulberleiden. The Avenger, Part 1 The Avenger, Part 1 of the Lock and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Derek Powell. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Hawthorne. The Avenger, by Thomas de Quincey. Part 1 Why callest thou me murderer and not rather the wrath of God, burning after the steps of the oppressor and cleansing the earth when it is wet 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 moral 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 sad 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 first to last and watched the whole course 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 violate 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 more stationary and native classes, would very soon have manifested their awful sense of things, of the hideous insecurity for life and of the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearts 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 observe the melancholy result. The more 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 aids had failed to yield the slightest assistance. The horror, the perfect frenzy of fear which seized upon the town after that experience baffles all attempt 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 minuteness 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 fear fell upon the population, so much the worse than 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 over-mastering 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 mind in 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 night 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 of 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 avail 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 course of the affair for giving 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 to the prince of M 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-de-camp to a Dutch general officer and is decorated with distinctions won 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 hours in particularly in the cavalry of our imperial guard he is English by birth a few to the Earl of E and heir presumptive to his immense estates there is a wild story current that his mother was a gypsy of transcendent beauty which may account for his somewhat moreish 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 favorite of his uncle who detained him in England after the emperor had departed and as this uncle is now in the last stage of infirmity Mr. Windham's succession to the vast family estates is inevitable and probably near at hand meanwhile he is anxious for some assistance in his studies intellectually he stands at the very first rank of men as I am sure you will not be slow to discover but his long military service and the unparalleled to moilt 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 or from that during the French anabasis to Moscow he entered our service made himself a prodigious favorite with the whole imperial family and even now is only in his 22nd 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 in Prince 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 intellects 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 monesthetic abode for one year he was to keep a table and an establishment of servants at his own cost was to have an apartment of some dozen or so of rooms the unrestricted use of the library with some other public privileges willingly conceded by the magistracy of the town in return 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 laterally 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 passport into German favor but much more since the late memorable wars that but for Englishman would have drooped into disconnected efforts next an Englishman of rank and of the Haudenoblis 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 Pharsalia radiant with the favor of courts and of imperial ladies finally which alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts an antennaeus of faultless beauty a Grecian statue 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 effort the vulgar consummation and yet to 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 fairy tale unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society every tongue was busy in discussing the marvelous 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 anywhere there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation but in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind it is always useful to rack the expectation 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 splendor in this instance 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 traveled 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 in 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 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 lineaments 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 that of sadness had settled more profound than seemed possible for youth or almost commiserate 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 favor and distinction in reality his wealth and importance his military honors and the dignity of his character as expressed in his manners and deportment were too imminent 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 really 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 demeanor unless when it was revived by strength of friendship or of love the effect was awkward and embarrassing to all parties every voice paused or faltered when he entered a room dead silence ensued not an eye but was directed upon him or else in 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 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 centered in his 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 that surrounded that sadness were there then no exceptions to this condition of awe-struck admiration? Yes one at least there was in whose bosom the spell of an 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 Leibnheim 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 an interpret passed 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 some birds she seemed with powers un-exercised for soaring and flying not understood even as yet and that never until now had found an element of air 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 a mere possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated fearing however that in his own case he would not be able to come here 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 the new arrangement 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 Heraldstein 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 favor 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 affections 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 his son for the last seven years at our college until he was now entering upon his 23rd year for the for last he had lived with me as the sole pupil whom I had or meant to have had not the brilliant proposals of the young Russian guardsmen persuaded me to break my resolution and then von Harrelstein 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 favorite and everywhere indeed except exactly there where only in this world he cared for favor Margaret Leibenheim she it was whom he loved and had loved for years with the whole ardor of his ardent soul she it was for whom I had 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 pitted 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 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 revere starting fearful agitated sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath invoking some absent person praying beseeching menacing some air-wove phantom sometimes he slunk into solitary corners and with gestures sorrowfully significant or with tones and fragments of expostulation that moved the most callous to compassion still he turned a deaf ear to the only practical council that had a chance for 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 Heraldsteins for Roman Catholics lead us not into temptation that is our daily prayer to God then my son being led into temptation do not you persist in courting 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 in absence of some duration but he was obliged to desist for he saw that without affecting 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 there are already and but too many the old man's side and desisted then came but enough from pity from sympathy from counsel and from consolation and from scorn from each of these alike the poor stricken 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 farewell but alas no still he returned to the haunts of his ruined happiness and his buried hopes at each return looking more like the wreck of his former self and once I heard a penetrating monk observe whose convents 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 sang through our ancient forests from the accident of our magistracy being selected by the government of the city the hospitalities of the place were far more extensive than would otherwise have happened for every member of the corporation gave two annual entertainments in his official character and such was the rival ship which prevailed that often one quarter of the year's income was spent upon these galas nor was any ridicule thus incurred for the costliness of the entertainment was understood to be an expression of official pride in 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 a family which otherwise could not have hoped for such a distinction upon 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 Leibnheim 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 cede their places with pleasure women make way even she herself knew though not obliged to know why she was ceded in her neighborhood and took her place if with a rosy suffusion upon her cheeks yet with fullness of happiness at her heart the guardsman pressed forward to claim miss Leibnheim's hand for the next dance a movement which she was quick to favor 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 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 to malt every eye was bent toward her 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 miss Leibnheim had moved downward to the crowd from her superior height she overlooked all the ladies at the point where she stood in the center stood a rustic girl whose features had been familiar to her for some months she had recently come into the city and had 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 mere panic seemed to have mastered her and she was leaning unconscious and weeping upon the shoulder of some gentleman who was endeavoring 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 heard her first agitated words finding that they had 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 said what was true that her uncle 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 infirm 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 of 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 Leibenheim 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 pallid lips that sight was more than could be born by one who stood a little behind the group he rushed forward with eyes glaring like a tiger's and leveled a blow at Maximilian it was poor maniacal von Herlstein who had been absent in the forest for a week many people stepped forward and checked his arm uplifted for a repetition of this outrage one or two had some influence with him and led him away from the spot while as 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 amid a great crowd and yet the prudes 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 also be recollected of an examination 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 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 immediately before the murder the circumstances were such as to leave every man in 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 the suspicions against himself was to laugh ferociously and to all appearance 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 massy plate gold snuff boxes untouched that argument certainly weighed much in his favor 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 and a fact which had puzzled no less than it had awed the magistrates that upon their examination of the premises many rich articles of bizoutery, jewelry and personal ornaments had been found lying undereanged 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 prize 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 workmanship for the private celebration of mass this crucifix as well as everything else in the little closet must have been seen by at least one of the murderous party for hither had one of the ladies fled hither had one of the murderers fled 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 did the elder sister lie when the magistrates first broke open the street door and upon the beautiful parkie or inlaid floor which ran around the room 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 colored most unquestionably so far as this went it furnished a negative circumstance in favor 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 rooms and their ordinary condition a glance of the eye had been sufficient 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 henceforward which passed before us one by one in sad leisurely or in terrific groups seem to argue a lethargy like that of apoplexy in the victims one and all the very midnight of mysterious awe fell upon all minds three weeks had passed since the murder of Mr. Weishaupt 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 too 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 clothed in mystery and utter 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 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 modificently and being rich beyond their wants or any means of employing wealth which their gloomy asceticism allowed they had the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent papists of the suburbs as to the old gentleman and his wife their infirmities can find 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 sensorious 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 end of the avenger part one