Black Diamonds: A Novel

by Mór Jókai

The pastor, in a soothing voice, explained to her that his sacristan was almost as much a part of the Church as himself; moreover, that he was absolutely necessary on this occasion for the performance of the exorcism; in fact, without him the ceremony could not take place, seeing that the sacred vessel containing the holy water, the crucibulum and lanterns, should be carried before him to give all due effect to the religious rite.

Under these circumstances Countess Theudelinde gave her consent, on the condition that the obnoxious male intruder should not enter the castle itself. Still more, the pastor promised to watch in the greenhouse after the castle gates were locked.

According to these arrangements, when it began to get dark, Father Mahok arrived, bringing with him his sacristan, a man of about forty, with a closely shaved mustache and a very copper-colored face. The pastor left him in the greenhouse, and proceeded himself to the dining-room, where the countess was awaiting him for supper. No one ate a morsel. The pastor had no appetite, neither had the countess, nor her companion. The air was too full of the coming event to allow of such a gross thing as eating.

After supper the countess withdrew to her room, and Herr Mahok went to the greenhouse, where the sacristan had made himself comfortable with wine and meat, and had kept up the fires in the oven. The servants had been kept in ignorance of what was going on; they had never heard the midnight mass, nor the wild shrieks and infamous songs of the inhabitants of the vault, and the countess would not allow the ears of her innocent handmaidens to be polluted with such horrors. Therefore, every one in the castle slept. The pastor watched alone. At first Herr Mahok tried to pass the long hours of the night in reading his prayers, but as his habitual hour for sleep drew near he had to fight a hard battle with his closing eyelids. He was afraid that if he slumbered his imagination would reproduce the countess's dream, to which, be it said, he did not give credence; at the same time, he did not wholly doubt. Generally, he found that his breviary provoked sleep, and now he thought it better to close the book, and try what conversation with the sacristan would do as a means to keep awake.

The clerk's discourse naturally turned upon ghostly appearances; he told stories of a monk without a head, of spirits that appeared on certain nights in the year, of hobgoblins and witches, all of which he had either seen with his own eyes or had heard of from persons whose veracity was unimpeachable.

"Folly! lies!" said the excellent pastor; but he could not help a creeping sensation coming over him. If he could even have smoked, it would have strengthened his nerves; but smoking was forbidden in the castle. The countess would have smelled it, as the giant in the old fairy tale smelled human flesh.

When the sacristan found that all his wonderful tales of ghosts and hobgoblins were considered lies, he thought it was no use tiring himself talking, and as soon as he ceased sleep began to fall upon his eyelids. Seated upon a stool, his head leaning against the wall, his mouth open, he slept profoundly, to the envy, if not the admiration, of the good pastor, who would willingly have followed his example. Soon some very unmusical sounds made themselves heard. The sacristan snored in all manner of keys, in all variations of nasal discord, which so jarred on the pastor's nerves that he several times shook the sleeper to awake him, with the result that he slept again in no time.

At last the clock on the castle tower chimed twelve. Herr Mahok struck the sacristan a good blow on his shoulder.

"Get up!" he said. "I did not bring you here to sleep."

The clerk rubbed his eyes, already drunk with sleep. The pastor took his snuff-box to brighten himself up with a pinch of snuff, when suddenly both men were roused out of all the torpor of sleep by other means. Just as the last beat of the clock had finished striking the unearthly mass began to be intoned in the vault below. Through the profound silence of the night was heard the voice of the priest singing the Latin mass, with the responses of the choir, accompanied by some instrument that sounded like an organ, but which had a shriller tone, and seemed to be a parody of the same.