"Oho! Now you speak like Launce to his dog!"
Their conversation, which had begun so merrily, was here suddenly interrupted by a rattling peal of thunder, that announced a near-approaching storm. It was late in the afternoon, and the whole heaven black with low, trailing clouds. Still blacker the storm came sailing up majestically from the southwest, with almost unbroken volleys of distant thunder. The wind seemed to be storming a cloud redoubt; and marched onward with dust, and the green banners of the trees flapping in the air, and heavy cannonading, and occasionally an explosion, like the blowing up of a powder-wagon. Mingled with this was the sound of thunder-bells from a village not far off. They were all ringing dolefully to ward off the thunderbolt. At the entrance of the village stood a large wooden crucifix; around which was a crowd of priests and peasants, kneeling in the wet grass, by the roadside, with their hands and eyes lifted toheaven, and praying for rain. Their prayer was soon answered.
The travellers drove on with the driving wind and rain. They had come from Landeck, and hoped to reach Innsbruck before midnight. Night closed in, and Flemming fell asleep with the loud storm overhead, and at his feet the roaring Inn, a mountain torrent leaping onward as wild and restless, as when it first sprang from its cradle in the solitudes of Engaddin; meet emblem of himself, thus rushing through the night. His slumber was long, but broken; and at length he awoke in terror; for he heard a voice pronounce in his ear distinctly these words;
"They have brought the dead body."
They were driving by a churchyard at the entrance of a town; and among the tombs a dim lamp was burning before an image of the Virgin. It had a most unearthly appearance. Flemming almost feared to see the congregation of the dead go into the church and sing their midnight mass. He spoke to Berkley; but received no answer; he was in a deep sleep.
"Then it was only a dream," said he to himself; "yet how distinct the voice was! O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies,--should behold them streaming up like thin vapors heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel's trump sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the awful judgment day. Truly the soul departs not alone on its last journey, but spirits of its kind attend it, when not ministering angels; and they go in families to the unknown land! Neither in life nor in death are we alone."
He slept again at intervals; and at length, though long after midnight, reached Innsbruck between sleeping and waking; his mind filled with dim recollections of the unspeakably dismal night-journey;--the climbing of hills, and plunging into dark ravines;--the momentary rattling of the wheels over paved streets of towns, and the succeeding hollow rolling and tramping on the wetearth;--the blackness of the night;--the thunder and lightning and rain; the roar of waters, leaping through deep chasms by the road-side, and the wind through the mountain-passes, sounding loud and long, like the irrepressible laughter of the gods.
The travellers on the morrow lingered not long in Innsbruck. They did not fail, however, to visit the tomb of Maximilian in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, and gaze with some admiration upon the twenty-eight gigantic bronze statues of Godfrey of Bouillon, and King Arthur and Ernest the Iron-man, and Frederick of the Empty Pockets, kings and heroes, and others, which stand leaning on their swords between the columns of the church, as if guarding the tomb of the dead. These statues reminded Flemming of the bronze giants, which strike the hours on the belfry of San Basso, in Venice, and of the flail-armed monsters, that guarded the gateway of Angulaffer's castle in Oberon. After gazing awhile at these motionless sentinels, they went forth, and strolled throughthe public gardens, with the jagged mountains right over their heads, and all around them tall, melancholy pines, like Tyrolese peasants, with shaggy hair; and at their feet the mad torrent of the Inn, sweeping with turbid waves through the midst of the town. In the afternoon they drove on towards Salzburg through the magnificent mountain-passes of Waidering and Unken.
[CHAPTER III. SHADOWS ON THE WALL.]
On the following morning Flemming awoke in a chamber of the Golden Ship at Salzburg, just as the clock in the Dome-church opposite was striking ten. The window-shutters were closed, and the room nearly dark. He was lying on his back, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and his eyes looking up at the white curtains overhead. He thought them the white marble canopy of a tomb, and himself the marble statue, lying beneath. When the clock ceased striking, the eight and twenty gigantic bronze statues from the Church of Holy Rood in Innsbruck stalked into the chamber, and arranged themselves along the walls, which spread into dimly-lighted aisles and arches. On the painted windows he saw Interlachen, withits Franciscan cloister, and the Square Tower of the ruins. In a pendent, overhead, stood the German student, as Saint Vitus; and on a lavatory, or basin of holy-water, below, sat a cherub, with the form and features of Berkley. Then the organ-pipes began to blow, and he heard the voices of an invisible choir chanting. And anon the gilded gates in the bronze screen before the chancel opened, and a bridal procession passed through. The bride was clothed in the garb of the Middle Ages; and held a book in her hand, with velvet covers, and golden clasps. It was Mary Ashburton. She looked at him as she passed. Her face was pale; and there were tears in her sweet eyes. Then the gates closed again; and one of the oaken poppy-heads over a carved stall, in the shape of an owl, flapped its broad wings, and hooted, "Towhit! to-whoo!" Then the whole scene changed; and he thought himself a monk's-head on a gutterspout; and it rained dismally; and Berkley was standing under with an umbrella, laughing!