“Why should I, man, refrain from telling the truth even now? Bedad, I’ve hit the right nail on the head this time at any rate.”
“For the present, however, I shall regard your charge of me and my orders in silence. I have come here to perform the last rites of the Church over the dead. The day to me is one of unusual solemnity. I loved your son as if he had been my own child. He was a good and pious youth, notwithstanding the evil influences by which he was surrounded. But he is gone, and the place that knew him shall know him no more. And now, my lord, what hour have you fixed for carrying his remains to that silent bourne from whence no traveller ever comes back?”
“We propose to bury at five; and after the funeral I have, Father Olyver, a grand banquet in my palace, and we anticipate a merry meeting.”
“And cannot you, my lord, give up folly and pleasure for a single day? Can’t you devote one evening to pursuits which harmonize with the solemnity of the day? You have received from time to time, and year after year, the most terrible warnings, yet you heed them not. You hear the sound of the trumpet, to which you have paid no attention. If you continue to live as you have lived, my dear prince—if you resolve, come what will, to steel your heart, and defy the Almighty,—the day is not far distant when the wrath of an angry God will descend upon you and yours, and on that day—rather on that dark and dismal night—the sword of His justice will descend, and the innocent and the guilty shall perish together. I now leave you, my prince, but in a few hours we shall meet again at the grave of departed virtue, and something tells me that when we then part it will be a parting for ever.”
At the time appointed the funeral cortège arrived at Llangasty. The young prince was buried with extraordinary pomp. When the service was concluded, Father Olyver went up and pressed the hand of the prince, and bidding him good-bye, whispered in his ear, “Remember, my lord, the warning voice: it has spoken once, twice, ay, thrice; the next time it will speak in thunder and lightning, when the earth shall move and reel like a drunken man. So now, farewell. I fear we shall never meet again.”
The good priest then turned away from prince and people. He re-entered the church for evening song, while the prince and the mourners returned to the palace to make merry and be glad. Before they arrived home, the day had disappeared, and the night had come. Darkness had settled down upon the earth. When they entered the palace, they little dreamt of being on the very brink of a precipice over which they would be hurled by the fiat of the Eternal.
CHAPTER III.
THE FATAL BANQUET; OR, VENGEANCE AT HAND.
The palace of the Prince of Llynfi was characterized by drunkenness and vice, dissipation and sensuality, intemperance and debauchery. Virtue had no lodgment there. Righteousness had no habitation there. Justice, religion, and truth were wholly absent from the palace of the prince. He and his family gave themselves up to pleasure, to riotous living, and to revellings; and from day to day, week to week, and month to month, they lived as if there was no God—no hereafter—no judgment to come! Moreover, they had so sunk in sin and iniquity, that they were quite insensible to those feelings which are common and general, and indeed universal, in the lowest state of humanity. Flower after flower of the family circle had withered and died, or had been plucked from the tree of life by the will of the Almighty, yet from the heart of the survivors there never escaped a sigh; never a tear was shed; their hearts had become a flinty rock, and were as insensible of impression as the Parian marble. Thus they lived: thus, too, they died; for at last they were cut down as cumberers of the ground.
Before the untimely death of the son, the prince had arranged for a grand banquet to take place on the very day his mortal remains were consigned to the tomb. During the progress of preparation for the funeral, preparations were also being made for the expected banquet. On their return from the church, many of the guests had already arrived and many more soon followed. By nine o’clock the palace was filled with a splendid array of the licentious male and female inhabitants of the villages in the surrounding country. According to old traditions, two renowned minstrels from a distance had been summoned to cheer them in their revels; and riot and disorder, such as had never before been witnessed even in that palace, resounded among the hills. The party had been many hours assembled: it was midnight. In the midst of their revellings there was suddenly heard a crash of thunder, which shook the palace to its foundation; and this was immediately followed by louder and louder peals, which boomed through the valley as the noise of a thousand pieces of artillery. The prince and his riotous companions were awe-struck, and presently they heard a voice saying in deep, solemn tones, “Vengeance is at hand!” In a moment the two minstrels arose, and beholding in the air a mysterious hand beckoning to them, they fled after it as it retreated. The hand moved faster and faster, and as it moved they increased their speed. After they had gone a considerable distance the earth heaved violently, and appeared to totter on its foundations. For a moment they turned round to see the distance they had come. They saw the ground divide in twain, and up through this large chasm they beheld the waters rushing forth like the ocean when convulsed, and mingling with the roaring sound of the waters were the dying shrieks of the revellers. Pausing for another moment in their flight, the minstrels observed, with great terror, a wide expanse of boiling and agitated waters where the palace and village had stood, engulfing the palace and its wicked and impious inmates far below its bosom. Since then, Llyn Savathan has ever been regarded as an unhallowed spot; the great wickedness of the prince and his followers having drawn upon them the just judgment of the Eternal.