Memorials and Other Papers — Complete

by Thomas De Quincey

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No heart was found savage enough to exult; the sorrow even of such a father was sacred. Death, and through his own orders, had struck the only being whom he had ever loved; and the petrific mace of the fell destroyer seemed to have smitten his own heart, and withered its hopes forever.

Everybody comprehended the mistake in a moment. Paulina had lingered at Waldenhausen under the protection of an imperial corps, which she had met in her flight. The tyrant, who had heard of her escape, but apprehended no necessity for such a step on the part of his daughter, had issued sudden orders to the officer commanding the military post at Falkenberg, to seize and shoot the female prisoner escaping from confinement, without allowing any explanations whatsoever, on her arrival at Falkenberg. This precaution he had adopted in part to intercept any denunciation of the emperor's vengeance which Paulina might address to the officer. As a rude soldier, accustomed to obey the letter of his orders, this commandant had executed his commission; and the gentle Adeline, who had naturally hastened to the protection of her father's chateau, surrendered her breath meekly and with resignation to what she believed a simple act of military violence; and this she did before she could know a syllable of her father's guilt or his fall, and without any the least reason for supposing him connected with the occasion of her early death.

At this moment Paulina made her appearance unexpectedly, to reassure the young Landgrave by her presence, and to weep over her young friend, whom she had lost almost before she had come to know her. The scaffold, the corpse, and the other images of sorrow, were then withdrawn; seven thousand imperial troops presented arms to the youthful Landgrave and the future Landgravine, the brilliant favorites of the emperor; the immense area of St. Agnes resounded with the congratulations of Klosterheim; and as the magnificent cortege moved off to the interior of the schloss, the swell of the coronation anthem rising in peals upon the ear from the choir of St. Agnes, and from the military bands of the imperial troops, awoke the promise of happier days, and of more equitable government, to the long-harassed inhabitants of Klosterheim.

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The Klosterheimers knew enough already, personally or by questions easily answered in every quarter, to supply any links which were wanting in the rapid explanations of the legate. Nevertheless, that nothing might remain liable to misapprehension or cavil, a short manifesto was this night circulated by the new government, from which the following facts are abstracted:

The last rightful Landgrave, whilst yet a young man, had been assassinated in the forest when hunting. A year or two before this catastrophe he had contracted what, from the circumstances, was presumed, at the time, to be a morganatic or left-handed marriage, with a lady of high birth, nearly connected with the imperial house. The effect of such a marriage went to incapacitate the children who might be born under it, male or female, from succeeding. On that account, as well as because current report had represented her as childless, the widow lady escaped all attempts from the assassin. Meantime this lady, who was no other than Sister Madeline, had been thus indebted for her safety to two rumors, which were in fact equally false. She soon found means of convincing the emperor, who had been the bosom friend of her princely husband, that her marriage was a perfect one, and conferred the fullest rights of succession upon her infant son Maximilian, whom at the earliest age, and with the utmost secrecy, she had committed to the care of his imperial majesty. This powerful guardian had in every way watched over the interests of the young prince. But the Thirty Years' War had thrown all Germany into distractions, which for a time thwarted the emperor, and favored the views of the usurper. Latterly, also, another question had arisen on the city and dependences of Klosterheim, as distinct from the Landgraviate. These, it was now affirmed, were a female appanage, and could only pass back to the Landgraves of X—— through a marriage with the female inheretrix. To reconcile all claims, therefore, on finding this bar in the way, the emperor had resolved to promote a marriage for Maximilian with Paulina, who stood equally related to the imperial house and to that of her lover. In this view he had despatched Paulina to Klosterheim, with proper documents to support the claims of both parties. Of these documents she had been robbed at Waldenhausen; and the very letter which was designed to introduce Maximilian as "the child and sole representative of the late murdered Landgrave," falling in this surreptitious way into the usurper's hand, had naturally misdirected his attacks to the person of Paulina.

For the rest, as regarded the mysterious movements of The Masque, these were easily explained. Fear, and the exaggerations of fear, had done one half the work to his hands, by preparing people to fall easy dupes to the plans laid, and by increasing the romantic wonders of his achievements. Coöperation, also, on the part of the very students and others, who stood forward as the night-watch for detecting him, had served The Masque no less powerfully. The appearances of deadly struggles had been arranged artificially to countenance the plot and to aid the terror. Finally, the secret passages which communicated between the forest and the chapel of St. Agnes (passages of which many were actually applied to that very use in the Thirty Years' War) had been unreservedly placed at their disposal by the lady abbess, an early friend of the unhappy Landgravine, who sympathized deeply with that lady's unmerited sufferings.

One other explanation followed, communicated in a letter from Maximilian to the legate; this related to the murder of the old seneschal,—a matter in which the young prince took some blame to himself, as having unintentionally drawn upon that excellent servant his unhappy fate. "The seneschal," said the writer, "was the faithful friend of my family, and knew the whole course of its misfortunes. He continued his abode at the schloss, to serve my interest; and in some measure I may fear that I drew upon him his fate. Traversing late one evening a suite of rooms, which his assistance and my own mysterious disguise laid open to my passage at all hours, I came suddenly upon the prince's retirement. He pursued me, but with hesitation. Some check I gave to his motions by halting before a portrait of my unhappy father, and emphatically pointing his attention to it. Conscience, I well knew, would supply a commentary to my act. I produced the impression which I had anticipated, but not so strongly as to stop his pursuit. My course necessarily drew him into the seneschal's room. The old man was sleeping; and this accident threw into the prince's hands a paper, which, I have reason to think, shed some considerable light upon my own pretensions, and, in fact, first made my enemy acquainted with my existence and my claims. Meantime, the seneschal had secured the prince's vengeance upon himself. He was now known as a faithful agent in my service. That fact signed his death- warrant. There is a window in a gallery which commands the interior of the seneschal's room. On the evening of the last fête, waiting there for an opportunity of speaking securely with this faithful servant, I heard a deep groan, and then another, and another; I raised myself, and, with an ejaculation of horror, looked down upon the murderer, then surveying his victim with hellish triumph. My loud exclamation drew the murderer's eye upwards: under the pangs of an agitated conscience, I have reason to think that he took me for my unhappy father, who perished at my age, and is said to have resembled me closely. Who that murderer was, I need not say more directly. He fled with the terror of one who flies from an apparition. Taking a lesson from this incident, on that same night, by the very same sudden revelation of what passed, no doubt, for my father's countenance, aided by my mysterious character, and the proof I had announced to him immediately before my acquaintance with the secret of the seneschal's murder, in this and no other way it was that I produced that powerful impression upon the prince which terminated the festivities of that evening, and which all Klosterheim witnessed. If not, it is for the prince to explain in what other way I did or could affect him so powerfully."

This explanation of the else unaccountable horror manifested by the ex- Landgrave on the sudden exposure of The Masque's features, received a remarkable confirmation from the confession of the miserable assassin at Waldenhausen. This man's illness had been first brought on by the sudden shock of a situation pretty nearly the same, acting on a conscience more disturbed, and a more superstitious mind. In the very act of attempting to assassinate or rob Maximilian, he had been suddenly dragged by that prince into a dazzling light; and this settling full upon features which too vividly recalled to the murderer's recollection the last unhappy Landgrave, at the very same period of blooming manhood, and in his own favorite hunting palace, not far from which the murder had been perpetrated, naturally enough had for a time unsettled the guilty man's understanding, and, terminating in a nervous fever, had at length produced his penitential death.