So worthy of such an ancestor, was he, too, to perish?
This was, indeed, a miserable mood of mind in which to pass the nights and days of inactivity—of suspense and anxiety in which none could share, in that strong, guarded, and somewhat lonely fortress, which was washed, as we have said, on one side by the Neva, and on the other by the Lake of Ladoga, the very ripples of whose waves sounded hatefully in the ears of Balgonie.
"Oh," thought he, "to be with Natalie on the side of a green and breezy Scottish mountain—on any part of the shore of free and happy Britain! to be with her there in peace and security, far, far from this land of suspicion and ferocious despotism, of state intrigues and savage punishments, where every second man is the spy upon, and the betrayer of, his fellow."
Britain he might never see more: and now he found himself vaguely speculating on the probable comforts and public amusements afforded by Siberia, and those growing cities of the sorrowing and the banished, Tobolsk and Irkutsk, on the banks of the Lower Angara.
He feared to look much, or often, towards the distant Wood of the Honey Tree, lest watchful eyes might be upon him to gather hints therefrom; still more did he fear to visit Natalie again, lest, by doing so, he might lead to the discovery and arrest of all: so the days and nights of dread, of longing, and suspense, passed slowly after each other now.
The barriers of rank and wealth—the wealth afforded by the Count's estates and mines, his populous villages of serfs, and vast forests of timber—had all been removed now, and Natalie was reduced to a level lower even than her lover's; yet he cursed the mad schemes that had brought about such a revolution, and tossed feverishly and sleeplessly on his bed, when he thought of Natalie Mierowna,—his own loving and beloved Natalie,—so delicate and so tender, with her white soft skin and silky hair, her earnest and beautiful eyes, lurking among stern and outlawed soldiers in yonder damp cavern of the rocks, upon her bed of leaves and moss, at the mercy, perhaps, of any adherent of Basil's, who, to save his own head, might prove a traitor to them all! This dread was ever before him.
The whole affair reminded him of some of the old Scottish raids or Jacobite plots, of years long passed away; and it was fated to resemble the former more strongly in some of its features, as the dark sequel will show.
The guards and sentinels at Schlusselburg were doubled; the patrols were incessant by land, while on the lake the gun-boats of Admiral Mackenzie cruised near the walls; the cannons were loaded; the watch-words changed sometimes twice within four-and-twenty hours; and the general state of preparation for a sudden attack was unremitting: but time passed on quietly until the night of the fifteenth of September, when the crowning catastrophe came.