Midnight came, and the Lady Paulina prepared to avail herself of her opportunities. She drew out the parcel of papers, which was large and miscellaneous in its contents. By far the greater part, as she was happy to observe, were mere copies of originals in the chancery at Vienna; those related to the civic affairs of Klosterheim, and were probably of a nature not to have been acted upon during the predominance of the Swedish interest in the counsels and administration of that city. With the revival of the imperial cause, no doubt these orders would be repeated, and with the modifications which new circumstances and the progress of events would then have rendered expedient. This portion of the papers, therefore, Paulina willingly restored to their situation in the closet. No evil would arise to any party from their present detention in a place where they were little likely to attract notice from anybody but the old lady in her ministries upon the fire. Suspicion would be also turned aside from herself in appropriating the few papers which remained. These contained too frequent mention of a name dear to herself, not to have a considerable value in her eyes; she was resolved, if possible, to carry them off by concealing them within her bosom; but, at all events, in preparation for any misfortune that might ultimately compel her to resign them, she determined, without loss of time, to make herself mistress of their contents.
One, and the most important of these documents, was a long and confidential letter from the emperor to the town council and the chief heads of conventual houses in Klosterheim. It contained a rapid summary of the principal events in her lover's life, from his infancy, when some dreadful domestic tragedy had thrown him upon the emperor's protection, to his present period of early manhood, when his own sword and distinguished talents had raised him to a brilliant name and a high military rank in the imperial service. What were the circumstances of that tragedy, as a case sufficiently well known to those whom he addressed, or to be collected from accompanying papers, the emperor did not say. But he lavished every variety of praise upon Maximilian, with a liberality that won tears of delight from the solitary young lady, as she now sat at midnight looking over these gracious testimonies to her lover's merit. A theme so delightful to Paulina could not be unseasonable at any time; and never did her thoughts revert to him more fondly than at this moment, when she so much needed his protecting arm. Yet the emperor, she was aware, must have some more special motive for enlarging upon this topic than his general favor to Maximilian. What this could be, in a case so closely connecting the parties to the correspondence on both sides with Klosterheim, a little interested her curiosity. And, on looking more narrowly at the accompanying documents, in one which had been most pointedly referred to by the emperor she found some disclosures on the subject of her lover's early misfortunes, which, whilst they filled her with horror and astonishment, elevated the natural pretensions of Maximilian in point of birth and descent more nearly to a level with the splendor of his self-created distinctions; and thus crowned him, who already lived in her apprehension as the very model of a hero, with the only advantages that he had ever been supposed to want—the interest which attaches to unmerited misfortunes, and the splendor of an illustrious descent.
As she thus sat, absorbed in the story of her lover's early misfortunes, a murmuring sound of talking attracted her ear, apparently issuing from the closet. Hastily throwing open the door, she found that a thin wooden partition, veined with numerous chinks, was the sole separation between the closet and an adjoining bed-room. The words were startling, incoherent, and at times raving. Evidently they proceeded from some patient stretched on a bed of sickness, and dealing with a sort of horrors in his distempered fancy, worse, it was to be hoped, than any which the records of his own remembrance could bring before him. Sometimes he spoke in the character of one who chases a deer in a forest; sometimes he was close upon the haunches of his game; sometimes it seemed on the point of escaping him. Then the nature of the game changed utterly, and became something human; and a companion was suddenly at his side. With him he quarrelled fiercely about their share in the pursuit and capture. "O, my lord, you must not deny it. Look, look! your hands are bloodier than mine. Fie! fie! is there no running water in the forest?—So young as he is, and so noble!—Stand off! he will cover us all with his blood!—O, what a groan was that! It will have broke somebody's heart-strings, I think! It would have broken mine when I was younger. But these wars make us all cruel. Yet you are worse than I am."
Then again, after a pause, the patient seemed to start up in bed, and he cried out, convulsively, "Give me my share, I say. Wherefore must my share be so small? There he comes past again. Now strike—now, now, now! Get his head down, my lord.—He's off, by G—! Now, if he gets out of the forest, two hours will take him to Vienna. And we must go to Rome: where else could we get absolution? 0, Heavens! the forest is full of blood; well may our hands be bloody. I see flowers all the way to Vienna: but there is blood below: 0, what a depth! what a depth!—O! heart, heart!—See how he starts up from his lair!—O! your highness has deceived me! There are a thousand upon one man!"
In such terms he continued to rave, until Paulina's mind was so much harassed with the constant succession of dreadful images and frenzied ejaculations, all making report of a life passed in scenes of horror, bloodshed, and violence, that at length, for her own relief, she was obliged to close the door; through which, however, at intervals, piercing shrieks or half-stifled curses still continued to find their way. It struck her as a remarkable coincidence, that something like a slender thread of connection might be found between the dreadful story narrated in the imperial document, and the delirious ravings of this poor, wretched creature, to whom accident had made her a neighbor for a single night.
Early the next morning Paulina and her servant were summoned to resume their journey; and three hours more of rapid travelling brought them to the frowning fortress of Lovenstein. Their escort, with any one of whom they had found but few opportunities of communicating, had shown themselves throughout gloomy and obstinately silent. They knew not, therefore, to what distance their journey extended. But, from the elaborate ceremonies with which they were here received, and the formal receipt for their persons, which was drawn up and delivered by the governor to the officer commanding their escort, Paulina judged that the castle of Lovenstein would prove to be their final destination.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Two days elapsed without any change in Paulina's situation, as she found it arranged upon her first arrival at Lovenstein. Her rooms were not incommodious; but the massy barricades at the doors, the grated windows, and the sentinels who mounted guard upon all the avenues which led to her apartments, satisfied her sufficiently that she was a prisoner.
The third morning after her arrival brought her a still more unwelcome proof of this melancholy truth, in the summons which she received to attend a court of criminal justice on the succeeding day, connected with the tenor of its language. Her heart died within her as she found herself called upon to answer as a delinquent on a charge of treasonable conspiracy with various members of the university of Klosterheim, against the sovereign prince, the Landgrave of X——. Witnesses in exculpation, whom could she produce? Or how defend herself before a tribunal where all alike—judge, evidence, accuser—-were in effect one and the same malignant enemy? In what way she could have come to be connected in the Landgrave's mind with a charge of treason against his princely rights, she found it difficult to explain, unless the mere fact of having carried the imperial despatches in the trunks about her carriages were sufficient to implicate her as a secret emissary or agent concerned in the imperial diplomacy. But she strongly suspected that some deep misapprehension existed in the Landgrave's mind; and its origin, she fancied, might be found in the refined knavery of their ruffian host at Waldenhausen, in making his market of the papers which he had purloined. Bringing them forward separately and by piecemeal, he had probably hoped to receive so many separate rewards. But, as it would often happen that one paper was necessary in the way of explanation to another, and the whole, perhaps, were almost essential to the proper understanding of any one, the result would inevitably be grievously to mislead the Landgrave. Further communications, indeed, would have tended to disabuse the prince of any delusions raised in this way. But it was probable, as Paulina had recently learned in passing through Waldenhausen, that the ruffian's illness and delirium had put a stop to any further communication of papers; and thus the misconceptions which he had caused were perpetuated in the Landgrave's mind.
It was on the third day after Paulina's arrival that she was first placed before the court. The presiding officer in this tribunal was the governor of the fortress, a tried soldier, but a ruffian of low habits and cruel nature. He had risen under the Landgrave's patronage, as an adventurer of desperate courage, ready for any service, however disreputable, careless alike of peril or of infamy. In common with many partisan officers, who had sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side and in the highest quarters, princes as well as supreme commanders, the uttermost contempt of justice and moral principle, he had fought his way to distinction and fortune, through every species of ignoble cruelty. He had passed from service to service, as he saw an opening for his own peculiar interest or merit, everywhere valued as a soldier of desperate enterprise, everywhere abhorred as a man.