This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the Duke's ear, and cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. Rage burnt in his eyes like flames of fire, and desperation uproared in his breast. If Heaven will not help me in this crisis, thought he, then let Hell! It was one of those entangling situations which the Arch-crimp, with his consummate skill in psychological science, can employ so dextrously when the enlisting of a soul that he has cast an eye on is to prosper in his hands. The Duke, without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded his sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. "Quick, my good fellow!" said he; "carry me, and this my trusty Lion, to Brunswick, before the varlet reach my bed!"—"Well!" answered Blackbeard, "but dost thou know the carriage-dues?"—"Ask what thou wilt!" said Duke Henry; "it shall be given thee at thy word."—"Thy soul at sight in the other world," replied Beelzebub.—"Done! Be it so!" cried furious jealousy, from Henry's mouth.
The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, between the two contracting parties. The Infernal Kite directly changed himself into a winged Griffin, and seizing the Duke in the one clutch, and the trusty Lion in the other, conveyed them both in one night from the Libyan coast to Brunswick, the towering city, founded on the lasting basis of the Harz, which even the lying prophecies of the Zillerfeld vaticinator have not ventured to overthrow. There he set down his burden safely in the middle of the market-place, and vanished, just as the watchman was blowing his horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then carol forth a superannuated bridal-song from his rusty mum-washed weasand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, still gleamed like the starry heaven with the nuptial illumination; every street resounded with the din and tumult of the gay people streaming forward to gaze on the decorated bride, and the solemn torch-dance with which the festival was to conclude. The Aeronaut, unwearied by his voyage, pressed on amid the crowding multitude through the entrance of the Palace; advanced with clanking spurs, under the guidance of his trusty Lion, to the banquet-chamber; drew his sword, and cried: "With me, whoever stands by Duke Henry; and to traitors, death and hell!" The Lion also bellowed, as if seven thunders had been uttering their united voices; shook his awful mane, and furiously erected his tail, as the signal of attack. The cornets and kettle-drums struck silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of battle pealed from the tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic roof, till the walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook.
The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butterflies of courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as the thousand Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the sturdy fist of the son of Manoah; and he who escaped the sword, rushed into the Lion's throat, and was butchered like a defenceless lamb. When the forward wooer and his retinue of serving-men and nobles were abolished, Duke Henry, having used his household privilege as sternly as of old the wise Ulysses to the wooing-club of his chaste Penelope, sat down to table, refreshed in spirit, beside his wife, who was just beginning to recover from the deadly fright his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, he cast a glance of triumph on his new conquest, and perceived that she was bathed in ambiguous tears, which might as well refer to loss as to gain. However, like a man that knew the world, he explained them wholly to his own advantage; and merely reproving her in gentle words for the hurry of her heart, he from that hour entered upon all his former rights.
Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from the lips of his nurse; yet in riper years, as an enlightened sceptic, entertained doubts of its truth. But in the dreary loneliness of his Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired a form of possibility, and his wavering nursery belief increased almost to conviction. A transit through the air appeared to him the simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of Darkness, in the gloomy midnight, chose to lend his bat-wings for the purpose. Though in obedience to his religious principles, he no night neglected to cut a large cross before him as he went to sleep; yet a secret longing awoke in his heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to accomplish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse in the night-season happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he immediately supposed the Hellish Proteus was announcing his arrival, and at times in thought he went so far as settling the freight charges beforehand. But except the illusion of a dream, which juggled him into an aerial journey to his German native land, the Count gained nothing by his nursery faith, except employing with these fantasies a few vacant hours; and like a reader of novels, transporting himself into the situation of the acting hero. Why old Abaddon showed himself so sluggish in this case, when the kidnapping of a soul was in the wind, and in all likelihood the enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted for in two ways. Either the Count's Guardian Angel was more watchful than the one to whom Duke Henry had intrusted the keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly that the Evil One could get no advantage over him; or the Prince of the Air had grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his own element, having been bubbled out of his stipulated freightage by Duke Henry after all their engagements; for when it came to the point with Henry, his soul was found to have so many good works on her side of the account, that the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled by them.
Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few moments in the midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, his returning servants brought the Countess tidings that their master had vanished from the camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some supposed that he had been the prey of snakes or dragons; others that a pestilential blast of wind had met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be held pro mortuo, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that her lord was alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this thought, which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stoutest stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth; who returned after several years' cruising over sea and land; but no olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the land of the living: for she had a firm persuasion that so tender and true a husband could not possibly have left the world without in the catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at home, and giving them some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, there had nothing happened in the Castle; neither in the armoury by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret by a rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted its Nænia down from the high battlements of the palace; nor had the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil omen, she inferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy, which even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's Organum is among the male, that her much-loved husband was still living; a conclusion, which we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her first two missions of discovery, the object of which was more important to her than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter her from sending out a third Apostle into All the World. This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his mind the adage, As soon gets the snail to his bed as the swallow; therefore he called at every inn, and treated himself well. And it being infinitely more convenient that the people whom he was to question about his master should come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position where he could examine every passenger from the East, with the insolent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier; and fixed his quarters by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the Holy Land passed through in their way home. Whether this shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means for discharging his appointed function, will appear in the sequel.
After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Tower at Grand Cairo,—a term which to the Count seemed far longer than to the Seven Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Roman catacombs,—he concluded himself to be forsaken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, where the kind face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight struggled faintly in through a window secured with iron bars. His devil-romance was long ago concluded; and his faith in miraculous assistance from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated.
From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by the rattling of a bunch of keys, before the door of his cell. Since the day of his entrance, his jailor had never more performed for him the office of turnkey; for all the necessaries of the prisoner had been conveyed through a trap-board in the door. Accordingly, it was not without long resistance, and the bribery of a little vegetable oil, that the rusty bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of the iron hinges, as the door went up with reluctant grating, was to the Count a compound of more melodious notes than ever came from the Harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding palpitation of the heart set his stagnant blood in motion; and he expected with impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his fate: for the rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought life or death. Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at whose signal they loosed the fetters from the prisoner; and a second mute sign from the solemn graybeard commanded him to follow. He obeyed with faltering steps; his feet refused their service, and he needed the support of the two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. He was then conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking at him with a reproachful air, thus spoke: "Obstinate Frank, what made thee hide the craft thou art acquainted with, when thou wert put into the Grated Tower? One of thy fellow-prisoners has betrayed thee, and informed us that thou art a master in the art of gardening. Go, whither the will of the Sultan calls thee; lay out a garden in the manner of the Franks, and watch over it like the apple of thy eye; that the Flower of the World may blossom in it pleasantly, for the adorning of the East."
If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Rector of the Sorbonne, the appointment could not have astonished him more, than this of being gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. About gardening he understood as little as a laic about the secrets of the Church. In Italy, it is true, he had seen many gardens; and at Nürnberg, where the dawn of that art was now first penetrating into Germany, though the horticultural luxury of the Nürnbergers did not yet extend much farther than a bowling-green, and a few beds of roman lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the cultivation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never troubled his head; and his botanic science was so limited, that the Flower of the World had never once come under his inspection. Hence he knew not in the least by what method it was to be treated; whether like the aloe it must be brought to blossom by the aid of art, or like a common marigold by the genial virtue of nature alone. Nevertheless, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignorance, or decline the preferment offered him; being reasonably apprehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for the post, by a bastinading on the soles.
A pleasant park was assigned him, which he was to change into a European garden. The spot had, either by the hand of bountiful Nature, or of ancient cultivation, been so happily disposed and ornamented already, that the new Abdalonymus, let him cudgel his brains as he would, could perceive no error or defect in it, nothing that admitted of improvement. Besides, the aspect of living and active nature, which for seven long years in his dreary prison he had been obliged to forego, affected him at once so powerfully, that he inhaled rapture from every grass-flower, and looked at all things around him with delight, like the First Man in Paradise, to whom the scientific thought of censuring anything in the arrangement of his Eden did not occur. The Count therefore found himself in no small embarrassment about discharging his commission creditably; he feared that every change would rob the garden of a beauty, and were he detected as a botcher, he must travel back into his Grated Tower.