CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SWORD OF GOD.
For some time past God's marvels had been multiplied over Transylvania. No longer were they disquieting rumours which popular agitators invented for the disturbance of the public peace, but extraordinary natural phenomena whose rapid sequence stirred the heart of even the coldest sceptic.
One summer morning at dawn, after a clear night, an unusually thick heavy mist descended upon the earth, which only dispersed in the afternoon, spread over the whole sky in the shape of an endless black cloud, and there remained like a heavy motionless curtain. Not a drop of water fell from it, and at noonday in the houses it was impossible to see anything without a candle.
Towards evening every bird became silent, the flowers closed their calices, the leaves of the trees hung limply down. The people walking about outside began to complain of a stifling cough, and from that time forth the germs of every disease antagonistic to nature were seen in every herb, in every fruit; even the water of the streams was corrupted. The hot blood of man, the earth itself was infected by a kind of epidemic, so that weeds never seen before sprang up and ruined the richest crops, and the strongest oaks of the forest withered beneath the assault of grey blight and funguses, and the good black soil of the fruitful arable land was covered with a hideous green mould.
For three whole days the sky did not clear. On the evening of the fourth day the stifling stillness was followed by a frightful hurricane, which tore off the roofs of the houses, wrenched the stars and crosses from the steeples of the churches, swept up the dust from the high-roads, caused such a darkness that it was impossible to see, and bursting open the willow trees, which had just begun to bloom, drove the red pollen before it in clouds, so that when the first big rain-drops began to fall they left behind them blood-red traces on the white walls of the houses. "It is raining blood from Heaven!" was the terrified cry. Not long afterwards came the cracking thunderbolts flashing and flaming as if they would flog the earth with a thousand fiery whips, while one perpendicular flash of lightning plumped right down into the middle of the town, shaking the earth with its cracking concussion, so that everyone believed the hour of judgment was at hand.
Nevertheless the storm had scattered the clouds, and by eventide the sky had cleared, and lo! before the eyes of the gaping multitude a gigantic comet stood in the firmament, all the more startling as nobody had been aware of its proximity because for three days the sky had been blotted out by clouds.
The nucleus of the comet stood just over the place where the sun had gone down, and the blood-red light of evening was not sufficient to dim the brightness of the lurid star; it appeared as if it had just slain the sun and was now bathing in its blood.
The comet was so long that it seemed to stretch across two-thirds of the firmament, and the end of it bulged out broadly like a Turkish scimitar.
"The sword of God!" whispered the people with instinctive fear.