—“And what then must be done?” cried Ida, wringing her hands in fear and agony.—“How can I escape so dreadful a destiny?”—
—“Escape?” repeated the Monk.—“Ha! right! right! my dear child, it was surely Heaven, that inspired you with the thought!—Yes! you must escape; you must fly from the Castle of Torrenburg!”—
—“Escape? fly?”—repeated the bewildered Ida; “and whither must I go?”—
“To a retreat,” replied the Monk, “where you may wait in security, till your uncle’s resentment is appeased, and your innocence can be made clear to him.—But you shall know more, as we go along. I know a secret passage, by which you may quit the Castle unobserved. Follow me, for you have not a moment to lose!—Nay, come, come! away!”—
Thus saying, he caught the lamp from the table with one hand, and grasping Ida’s arm with the other, he drew her from the chamber.—Bewildered, terrified, she had not presence of mind sufficient to form a resolution; and her exhausted frame was unable to resist the force, with which he urged her forwards, as she followed him through the long galleries, rather passively submitting, than wilfully consenting to his design.
I formerly mentioned, that Count Frederick still resided on the spot, which had once been the habitation of the antient Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans. To this he had chiefly been induced by the beauty of the situation: perhaps too his pride was secretly gratified by the recollection, that his residence was the same with that, whence his ancestors were accustomed to extend the sceptre of command over the surrounding provinces, and to set at defiance the resentment of many a sovereign prince, who possest much more lofty-sounding titles but much less real power and strength.—Still the gloomy, half-ruined Castle of Sargans was by no means a mansion suited to the taste of its modern possessor. Accordingly he had levelled to the ground the remains of a wing of this gigantic pile, which had formerly been destroyed by fire, and had erected in its place a stately palace, at once noble in its external form, and convenient in its interior accommodations. This was called the Castle of Torrenburg; while the forsaken halls and towers of Sargans were still distinguished by the name of the “Donat-Fortress,” the two buildings were separated by courts of considerable extent; the antient one was in a great measure suffered to go to ruin, except a few apartments which were kept up for the accommodation of domestics, when on solemn occasions the number of guests was too great to be received within the walls of the Count’s own residence.
Superstition had not failed to extend her dominion over the Donat-Fortress.—Traditions respecting the former Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans, which had been handed down from father to son, and with which you, Elizabeth, are already well acquainted, furnished subjects sufficient for a thousand wonderful stories. In truth, the prejudice, in favour of the opinion that the ruins were haunted, was so prevalent, that not merely among the Count’s domestics, but even among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages numbers of ghost-seers were to be found, who had beheld at sundry times (and with their own eyes) the spirits of Ethelbert and Urania, of Donat, Helen, and other traditionary personages, wandering among those abandoned halls and moss-grown towers; and they augured either favourable or inauspicious events to the reigning possessor, according as the vision represented a lady or a Monk, an innocent wife or her haughty tyrant husband.
Ida’s character is naturally extremely timid, and she had not escaped the contagion of superstitious terrors. It was therefore with no slight emotion, that she found her conductor taking the way, which led to the ruins.
—“Whither are you leading me?” said she frequently, as she followed him with trembling steps.—“Whither are you leading me?” she again demanded almost with a shriek; and as she snatched her hand from the Friar’s, her blood froze in her veins at perceiving, that she had now past the last of the separating courts, and stood before the massy walls and lofty round towers of the Donat-Fortress, whose colossal portal seemed to stretch wide its enormous jaws, as if for the purpose of devouring her.
Father Hilarius was now compelled to stop for a moment, and support his fainting companion. She reclined her head against his shoulder; and when she had in some degree recovered her spirits, she related to him, that happening once to be standing in her balcony at midnight, she had seen with her own eyes the apparitions of two Monks come out of the very gate, before which they were at that moment standing; that they went up to the old well in the corner, whose mouth is overgrown with moss and weeds, and there they seemed to vanish; and that upon relating what she had seen the next morning, the old portress had related to her a terrible history of two Monks belonging to the Abbey of Curwald, who were starved to death in a subterraneous dungeon by the order of one of the tyrant-counts of Carlsheim; that their bones were buried in that ruined well, in which Heaven’s retribution had ordained, that the murderer himself should perish; and that ever since that time, the place had been haunted by the ghosts of the two unfortunate Friars.