I could see him shiver and quake, and I went on repeating the same words: “I am Louis De Lacy, the son of him you murdered. He is before you in my person. He speaks to you by my voice. He demands that you do justice to his memory, even now, when you are trembling on the brink of that grave beyond which you will soon meet face to face. Answer me, Marquis de Carcassonne. Will you at length tell the truth? Will you do justice to the dead? Will you make the only atonement you can make to the murdered, before God puts his seal upon your obduracy, and you go to judgment for your crimes unconfessed and unrepented of?”
The old man quivered in every limb and his face was as pale as death; but he answered not a word, and I went on with a hardness of heart for which I have hardly forgiven myself yet. “You were once wealthy,” I said, “and you are now poor. You were once the inhabitant of gilded halls, and soft, luxurious apartments: You are now in a miserable garret, wretched, and dark, and gloomy. Your crimes have led not to greater wealth and opulence; not to comfort and indulgence; not to the objects of ambition and desire; but to penury, distress, and want. There is a further step before you—a deep abyss, into which you seem inclined to plunge. The grave is a colder dwelling than this, the tribunal of an all-seeing God more terrible than any you can appeal to here, the hell which you have dug for yourself, more agonizing than even your conscience at this moment.”
The very vehemence with which I spoke seemed to frustrate my own purpose, and to rouse in his decaying frame, and sinking mind, a spirit of resistance which had formerly been strong within him. He grasped the arm of his chair. He sat upright. He moved his jaw almost convulsively, and then said, with serpent bitterness, “So, so—son of a traitor. You would have me lie, would you, to recover for you your father’s estates, to clear your name from the infamy that hangs upon it, and shall hang upon it to all eternity. You would have me unsay all I have said, recant all I have sworn? But mark me, boy, I will put upon record before I die the confirmation of every charge against your treacherous father. I will leave it more deeply branded on his name than ever, that he deceived his king, betrayed his country, renounced his honor, falsified his word, and sold himself to the enemy, and his name shall stand in the annals of the world, as the blackest of traitors, and the basest of men—Ha, ha! What are your threats now, fool?”
I started up, and it was with great pain I kept my hands from him; but I mastered my first rash impulse, and I said, “Then I summon you to meet him whom you have belied and murdered, whom you still, unrepenting, and unatoning, calumniate and accuse, before the throne of Almighty God, and to answer, where falsehood is vain and cunning is of no resource, where the truth is written on tables of light, and falsehood is blotted out in everlasting darkness, where hell and eternal damnation await remorseless crime, for every word you have uttered this night! As your heart judges you, so feel, and so act. Die in peace and calm assurance, or in horror, and terror, and despair.”
He shrank back, and back, and back, into his chair, and at the last words, he pressed his trembling hands upon his eyes, as if he would have shut out the fearful images I had presented to him. His face grew livid, and his whole frame heaved, as if the torture of the eternal flame had already seized upon him.
I know not whether I should have said more or not; but a moment after I had ceased speaking, and while I still stood gazing at him, writhing before me, the door opened and a venerable looking old man, dressed in black, entered the room. He gazed an instant in surprise, at the pale and trembling wretch, and at me; and then he asked in a stern and solemn tone, “Who are you?—What have you done, young man?”
“I am Louis de Lacy,” I answered coldly. “That is the Marquis de Carcassonne, the murderer of my father. What I have done is what, if you are a priest, you should do—made a dark criminal tremble, before the way to atonement, and the gates of mercy are shut against him forever;” and without waiting for any further question, I hurried away from the room, down the dark staircase, and out into the crowded street.
——
LIGHT FROM THE PAST.
My thoughts were in such a state of tumult and confusion, that I cannot say I considered any thing for many minutes after I quitted the den of that old snake; but I took my way, at once, toward Westover’s lodgings, and told him all that had occurred.