The streets were in an uproar and every one was hastening to make resistance against the rebels, who appeared more dangerous than ever.
CHAPTER VII.
Some days had elapsed and the Counsellor of Parliament had not seen his son. Franz, the old domestic, had in the mean while set out on a journey, and Joseph, as well as the female servants had not ventured to disturb Edmond. The father was deeply concerned, for his son had never before so pointedly avoided him. His grief lay principally in the feeling, that he could not simply take the shortest and most natural way, with all a father's authority, to force an entrance into his room, which was always locked, and to question him about his condition. He learned from Joseph, that his son always locked himself in, that he was heard to sigh, nay, to weep, and that at night he would steal out to wander about on the mountains, and then would as secretly return in the morning, and avoid every body, in order to go and shut himself up again as before. He seemed also to observe a rigid fast, for he took no food and sent away every thing that was offered to him. "I no longer understand him," said the old man to himself, as he was left once more alone; "his high-wrought feelings destroy him, and I, his father, must see him go to ruin without being able to do anything to save him. At length the dark spirits are roused, that I have so long heard in their slumbers; they have now assuredly taken possession of his soul."
It was late, and the night was still and dark; he dismissed the servants, in order to be able to converse uninterruptedly with his son, for it appeared to him an indispensable duty to make himself acquainted with his condition, the uncertainty of which weighed more painfully on his heart than the conviction of an actual misfortune would have done. He took therefore the master-key, in order to ascend the great staircase, when he heard the door of his son's room opened; he stood still, and a ghastly pale figure in a dusky green coarse doublet, descended towards him, his gun was slung over his shoulder, his hair in wild disorder, his eyes dim, "Oh heaven!" exclaimed the father, "I think I see a spirit, and it is you my son!"--He tottered, and trembling was compelled to sit down on the stairs. "Is it you in reality?"--"It is myself," answered Edmond in a hollow voice. "How?" said the old man, "thus, in this figure? thus ill? in this dress? you look though as like a Camisard, as if you were one of them."--"It is so too," answered the son, "I am now going up into the mountains to them."
The father started up violently, he seized his son powerfully in his arms, and thus carried him with supernatural strength into the saloon; he placed him in an armchair, took the candle, looked at him scrutinizingly and examined his whole figure, seized him by the breast and cried out vehemently: "Wouldst thou act thus to me, unnatural son?"--
"Yes," answered Edmond coldly, "I cannot do otherwise, I must!--leave me! I thought, however, for once that I should win your approbation."
"As a rebel?" cried the Counsellor of Parliament in a vehement voice, "as a murderer? that I must see die under martyrdom at the gallows? to outrage my grey hair? one whom the father must deliver up into the hands of the executioner?"
The son looked at him fixedly, but coldly and collectedly; the father was deeply affected at it, but, at this ghastly look, had lost the strength which supernatural terror had lent him for a moment, and weeping aloud, he fell upon his son, who threw his arms round him, embraced him, and by his caresses sought to console the afflicted old man, "Oh, my son!" began the father, after a long pause, often interrupted by sobs, "for many years I have not experienced these tokens of affection in you, and now in this terrible moment, in which my whole life vanishes as in a dream, in which you have so violently torn my heart!--I cannot recover myself, I cannot question you, and what shall I experience if my entreaties, my love, if nothing will break your stubborn, enigmatical will? Oh, God of love! is there, in all the feelings thou hast created, one more fervid than that of a father to a child? and do we know the tremendous affliction we implore, when we entreat heaven for children?"
They remained long clasped in each other's arms, at length Edmond said: "Let me depart with your blessing, my father."
"That I cannot give to your dreadful designs," replied the Counsellor; "It is so fearful, that I must still look upon you and myself as two spectres."