she turned away, and sinking upon one knee, raised her clasped hands and streaming eyes—
“Ante pudor quam te violem, aut-tua-jura re-solvam.”
And she fell lifeless upon the ground. A step was heard. The count launched himself down the precipice. Roderick came, saw, and flew off on the wings of the wind, with a crushed heart and raving brain.
Ella’s first act of returning consciousness was to recognize herself reclining in the arms of Count Frederick. The swaying to and fro, the heavy lurch, the crackling stones, the dashing tramp, soon brought home to her mind the terrible certainty that she had departed from Heidelberg forever. How far she was away, whither she was going she knew not: she only knew that she was lost beyond redemption. Her body and her mind were powerless, paralyzed in utter imbecility: she could not, would not will: but as the reality of the world and her existence in it stole on her awakening senses, every power of her soul rushed to the view of her prostration; her heart struggled in very anguish, her reason staggered from side to side in the mazes of a darksome labyrinth; night had gathered around, and heavy dews swept through the carriage windows; terrors, strange and indefinable, fell like a death chill on her sickened soul, and she clung with frenzied grasp to the form beside her. Words of love, of courage, of hope, breathed into her ears another life, and she abandoned her whole being to the power of its inspiration. Ere morning dawned they were far away, and the second nightfall beheld them in Cologne.
Before I proceed any further, let me make a little necessary explanation concerning Ella’s picture. What Count Frederick said concerning her “father’s wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature was that of a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to in England, and whom he forsook for another, more to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious, and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting upon her and her family, he retired into as great obscurity as possible, on the continent, and married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered in his retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in his village, his fall in a duel with a brother of his former betrothed, were consequent upon that discovery. Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could be. The mystery which hung about the picture had prepared her mind to become the easy dupe of a well-told lie.
Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of a raging fever, whilst a sad and anxious watcher, night and day, moved ever silently about the darkened chamber. This was the most trying period of Count Frederick’s life. Ever and anon the low murmuring of troubled dreams would fall like heavy curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently move aside the curtains and bend his ear to feel the parching breath, words fraught with the odor of youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light of childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on her mind, and smiles of love and tenderness and purity would gently play about her mouth, dimpling her beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would whisper: “Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God keep little Ella from all sin.’ ” Then there would be some uneasy motion, some momentary contortion, as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling sigh, scarce rising with its burden of despair. O, how he shook in very agony! Then all was still. Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal application, to extend, by some inappreciable virtue of its own, its subtle influence unceasingly through the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none but ecstatic moods of happiness or devotion ever called forth from her stores of melody; even the name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation and softened whisper, rose up like threatening spectres in Count Frederick’s night of mental darkness. He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness, watched every quiver of her parted lips, and could have rejoiced in the life of their occasional smile or tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless eyes, and the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never changed in all her emotions—appalled with the coldness of some fearful death: and he turned away. He would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being, but his heart was void; it was his brain that ached, for he knew that all that melancholy ruins had fallen from a sublime structure by his fell utterance of a lie.
It behooves me now to hasten this lengthy history to a close. As soon as possible our wanderers hastened off to Paris, to restore their sunken spirits amid the pleasures and gayeties of the beau monde. There it was I saw them, as they took their evening airing along the Champs Elysées. They had been there several months, and poor Ella’s looks and manner both told the inefficiency of worldly pleasure, to lighten the heavy burden of a guilty soul. The gayety of France was like the smart of sparkling wine on an ulcerated sore, and away they wandered into distant lands. The still, death-like aspect of the Grecian shores seemed like the languor of cold sympathy with her own silent sorrow; and as the startling semblance rose up before her, and she viewed in every phase and feature that all that was elevating and life-giving was passed away, she shuddered at her own kindred desolation. She would venture upon the rocky cliffs and gaze into the troubled sea, where—as now in her own mind—the lights of Heaven were pictured in flitting and uncertain forms; she would look abroad upon the unspotted blue, where not a coming or departing sail broke the distinct horizon, and she would reflect how the powers of her soul were mouldered away, and brought no more back to her enjoyment the riches and the fruits of other climes, the luxuries from nature’s and religion’s overflowing bounty. Then she would wander upon the lonely strand, and the splashing of the journeyed waters, whose tempest roar was spent in low, last murmurs at her feet, reëchoed the wild moanings of a dying spirit. Oh! how she sat and cried. Had her tears been those of repentance and return, they would have hallowed for ever a spot that was only classic, and her groans would have lifted the vault of Heaven; but the bitter drops, wrung by degradation and despair, were swept away by the encroaching wavelets—and the sighs were borne afar by the winds, to swell that everlasting ROMOR of anguish that never reaches God.
In the Roman Colosseum, the blood-stained arena of the martyrs seemed to burn her very feet, and she looked not upon a stone, nor an herb, in that sanctuary of Christendom but returned a look of withering reproach, as if by express command of Heaven. There was no peace. Like Jonah, had she tried to flee from the wrath of God, and find ease and security in sin; and now that she found it not, she longed for death—but dared not court it—as the oblivion of all her being.
Again our fugitives sought the resources of Paris. Ella was fast failing in health, and both knew that she must soon die. She possessed no longer any gayety, and Count Frederick secretly rejoiced in her decline, as the only means of ridding himself of a burden now become almost insupportable. Still, her death would not have occurred without inflicting upon him one severe pang; for her intellect, increasing in beauty and brilliancy as the body faded, held him in a spell that seemed to involve his very life. A short time after their arrival in Paris, the revolution of February put all Europe in a commotion. It was a God-send to Count Frederick, for a field now opened to him for the employment of his faculties; something at last, if not repose, at least a breathing spell to ease him in his tired struggle with a sleepless, unflagging remorse. He plunged into the under-revolutionary current, heedless of whence it flowed or where it came to light. All manner of impure ultraïsm gathering in its way, formed the nuclei of innumerable vortices that eddied and whirled at every turn of his onward progress, hurling him along with strange fits of semi-delirium, until the following June, when the whole concentrated power bubbled in red volumes to the surface, and the streets of Paris ran with human blood. Count Frederick became a willing tool in crafty hands, and shrank not from offices of most imminent danger. All night and all day did he lend his wealth, his influence and his labor to the construction of barricades for the defense of the populace: he became a leading spirit, and on several occasions his sword was foremost in the fray. His attire, his repose, his ordinary food, all was forgotten. Once he stood tired and worn, within a new barricade not far from the barrière St. Martin; his hat and coat were thrown aside, his dress all torn and begrimed with sweat and dirt; in one hand he held a naked sword, whilst the other grasped the stock of a pistol that was still unmoved from his leathern belt. Upon this arm hung poor Ella, still clinging through toil and danger to him she could not but love. Her bonnet was thrown aside; a soiled cambric handkerchief tied beneath the chin, had kept in check her unbound hair, but it was now in places loose and disheveled; one dark lock swung around her neck, and as it reposed upon her bosom, the curled, purple extremity appeared in fearful contrast with the snowy field it lay upon. Woman to the last, she bore upon her person many a mark of blood, and many dying lips within the last few hours, had breathed a blessing upon the unknown and beautiful angel of mercy that bent above them. Upon a stove, that had been carried into the middle of the street, stood a popular demagogue, gesticulating wildly, and thundering anathemas against the provisional government, that were horrible for ears to listen to; whilst around him stood some hundreds of the armed and excited populace, venting, at almost every gesture of the frantic orator, vows of eternal vengeance on what they deemed the recreant soldiery. Some one had just arrived to announce that the military, in force, were marching upon them. The shadow of the hand of death seemed already to rest upon the multitude, and not an eye was there that did not dwell upon eternity. Soon the military, in serried ranks and with bristling bayonets, wheeled into view far down the street, and then commenced the steady advance upon the barricade. The orator grew wilder and wilder, and every heart in that vast multitude quivered in awful expectation. The street was cleared, not a soul moved upon the side-walks; and the measured tread of the soldiers, with now and then a groan or shriek from out some chamber, was all that broke the silence as they marched along. Soon the note of death sounded in the rear, then the noise of changing muskets, at the word of command—and immediately was heard from out the barricade, trembling in solemn melody, low sounds as of some unearthly dirge; and the words, “Mourir pour la patrie”—arose with many a mingled yell. With the gallop of the words—“c’est la mort la plus belle,” all rushed to action, and when the first great burst of the murderous fire was past, the last words of the death-song still rang o’er piles of bleeding men.
The attack on this barricade was long and bloody. At the second discharge, Count Frederick rolled from the mound of curb-stones upon which he had leaped to replace a fallen red-republican ensign, and was borne into a neighboring house; there all assistance ceased. As he lay bleeding upon the floor, in a state of almost insensibility, Ella knelt beside him, striving to staunch with her handkerchief, her dress, her hair, the exhaustless spring of blood that welled up from a bullet wound in his chest. Not a word escaped her lips, not a tear fell from her eye, but she bent all the faculties of her mind to the faithful accomplishment of her stupendous task. His breathing became weak and weaker; she heeded it not. The veil of eternity was settling upon him, and the dim vision of mortality was being illumined under its shadow; the heinousness of his damning crime shone out in perfect distinctness; but one reparation, he thought, and that a slight one, remained; but how could he ever summon courage to speak it there? She seemed to him, in truth, an angel, as he turned his glazing eyes toward her; she would not yield to despair. He made the sacrifice; collected all his strength of body and of mind, and told to the wretched girl the story of his deception. It fell upon her like a thunderbolt. For the first time she became aware of the stupendous depth of her fall. Her only stay, her only consolation, her only anchor of future hope, upon her troubled sea, had rested on the excuse of natal degradation: now that was taken away. She sunk upon the floor; but in a moment, with frantic energy she bounded to her feet, and seizing the flag-staff from the dying hand, rushed into the street. The combat still raged; leaping over the dead and dying, with a bound she reached the breast-work.