He again stood still, and looked restlessly on the dark pictures.
"You shake your heads, you silent figures; many of you have done injury to others; but you are all honorably interred, with mourning marshals and funeral horses. Songs have been sung in your honor, and learned men have framed Latin elegies, and sighed that the golden shower has ceased that fell upon them from your hands. There stands one of you," he exclaimed, gazing with fixed eyes on a corner; "there hovers the spirit of woe, the dark shadow that passes through this house when misfortune approaches it--guilt and atonement It passes along bodiless to frighten fools, an apparition of my diseased mind. I see it raise its hand--it scares me. I am terrified at the images of my own brain. Away!" he called out, aloud, "away! I am the lord of this house."
He ran through the room and stumbled; the black shadow hastened behind him. The Sovereign fell upon the floor. He cried aloud for help through the desolate space. A valet hastened from the anteroom. He found his master lying on the ground.
"I heard a shrill cry," said the Sovereign, raising himself up; "who was it that screamed above my head?"
The servant replied, trembling:
"I know not who it was. I heard the cry, and hastened hither."
"It was myself, I suppose," the master returned, in a faltering tone; "my weakness overcame me."
In the early morning the Professor called to the Castellan, and rushed up the staircase of the tower. He went about the room, pushing boards and planks in all directions; he found many forgotten chests, but not that which he sought. He made the Castellan open each of the adjoining rooms; went through garrets and cellars; he examined the forester, who lived in a house near by, but the latter could give him no information. When the Scholar again entered his room, he laid his head on his hands; prolonged disappointment and the consciousness of his impotence overmastered him. But he chid and restrained himself.
"I have lost too much of the cool circumspection which Fritz said was the highest virtue of a collector. I must accustom myself to the thought of self-resignation, and calmly examine the hopes which still remain. I must not be ungrateful also for the little I have gained."