VIII.
My campaigns were over. Rainer had laid a train, and fired the powder magazine of his captured hold. The bravest of my men perished; and I, crushed beneath a fragment of the toppling towers, lived to curse the art that returned me mutilated and miserable, to a world in which I was henceforth to have no portion.
I left the hospital a phantom, and set forth on a pilgrimage, the performance of which was the only business that remained to me in life. The tide of battle had ebbed from St. Michael, when I crawled up its steep—the church and castle were blackened ruins—the habitations of the villagers roofless and deserted—the mill a shapeless mass of timber and stones. Our orchard was unfolding the buds of spring—I fancied that the hoary apple-trees wore the aspect of friends—the voice of singing floated on my ear, as I neared the dwelling of my infancy, and the fountain of my heart re-opened.
Close to the spot where our pretty porch once stood, a matron, in the garb of extreme penury, was bending over the trampled remains of a plot of flowers. Her features were only partially revealed, but the mountain melody she sang could not be mistaken—I fell at my mother's feet! Shading back the hair from my scarred temples, she asked me if I had come from her children!
Mercy was vouchsafed to her and to me. She soon slumbered with the clods of the valley. My father had died, ere my departure from France; and the story of our injuries from the Austrian lightened the burden of remorse for the shedding of blood. I have discovered no trace of Katherine since I quitted her at the cave.