Again, for the third time in that day of life, met the Wanderer and his friend. They stood together in a Church, which was without the gates, and the cross on its towers was different from those on the Basilicas within the walls of the city. The altar was without adornment, and, as well as the walls and ceilings, was shrouded in the deepest mourning. Three tapers only were upon it, and they struggled vainly with the surrounding gloom.
I saw the Wanderer take one of these lights, and gaze, with a look of woe, upon the face of his friend. The young man was silent, he found no utterance, he had lost the secret of revealing, by honest words, the depths of the soul. But the bitter truth was expressed in the long wild cry which burst spasmodically from his lips. In it might be read the seduction and destruction of a young spirit, not consenting to its own shame and ruin!
He laid his head on the strong shoulder of his friend, and closed his heavy eyelids, as if he dreamed, in this trying moment, it would be possible for him thus to close them forever. But the Wanderer, suddenly calling him back to consciousness, said: 'Follow me! follow me, that thou mayst remember forever the Form of the murdered Mother!'
So saying, he led the young man to a low door which opened behind the Great Altar. A whirlwind, as if from plains of ice, blew upon them from the subterranean passages below, and the flame of the taper streamed upon the blast, swaying and torn into a line of dying sparks. And thus they commenced the plunge into the very bosom of night, descending ever lower and lower, exploring depth after depth, until at last they had worked their way through the narrow and winding passages, and stood in the sublime silence of the immensity of space.
Their taper had long ago gone out, but they needed not its flickering light. The swamp-fires of the night, the corpse-lights, the will-o'-the-wisps, sometimes fell like falling stars; sometimes rose like rising moons. Countless cemeteries seemed moving on in this weird light, one solemnly following the other, and on the dark gate of each glittered, as if graved in frosted silver, the name of the Murdered Nation, and on the white crosses gleaming within, the names of her martyred children. Vast piles of skeletons, of bones and skulls, lay in the path of the young man, and as he advanced he read the glorious inscriptions.
It now seemed to him that the ghosts of the buried were also moving on before him, increasing constantly in number, and all moaning as they sped on, until at last they seemed to condense into a murky vapor like a trailing storm-cloud, growing ever more and more pervading, and murmuring with thousands upon thousands of sad, but spirit-stirring national songs. The air gleamed with the flashing of sabres and wild waving of standards; conflagrations and flames filled the intervening spaces, like vivid flashes of restless lightning, now gleaming, now sinking into the bosom of the cloud. Faster and faster, farther and farther whirls the cloud of spirits. Then in my dream I saw them suddenly descend, driven over the earth like the withered leaves of autumn—beaten low upon the ground and drifting on like the summer's dust—while a strong cry burst from the driven shadows: 'O God, have mercy upon us!'
The Wanderer stopped before the gate of an open sepulchre, on which was graven the name of the many times Murdered. The letters blazed with a soft lambent flame, and he fell reverently upon his knees. Penetrated with mystic awe, he quivered from head to foot when he arose, and wept tenderly as he crossed the threshold.
A soft light, like that of an evening late in autumn, dimly illumined the space within. I saw the holy Coffin as it lay on the gentle slope of a hill; a giant Pine stood at its head, and in its topmost branches perched the Eagle, pierced to the heart and sleeping in its own blood. Within the coffin lay the sacred Form, with the cross on her breast, the veil on her face, the fetters on her hands, and the crown upon her forehead. I saw six such hills rising one after the other, separated from one another by the long grass, through which, in place of sunny brooks, flowed crimson streams of human gore. Hilts and shivered fragments of broken swords, overgrown with weeds and covered with rust, were lying scattered in every direction through the rank grass. On each of the six hills lay the same Coffin; the same Form. But always more and more strongly surged the streams of human blood; heavier and heavier grew the chains on the hands of the Dead; and paler and paler the dim autumnal light. At the foot of the last hill it was dark, and bitter cold; the currents of blood were frozen; the icicles hung from the branches of the Pine; the Eagle lay in his congealed gore; and in place of the veil, the face of the six times murdered Mother was closely covered with a sheet of snow.
When the young man reached this spot of gloom, he fell with his face upon the frozen earth, and cursed his life! In the distance sounded the moans of the shadows left at the gate of the sepulchre; he bowed his head and wept. He heard them ask: 'Is the six times Murdered really dead? will she rise no more to deliver her faithful children from mortal anguish?'
The Wanderer replied not, but looked with eyes of melancholy love upon his friend who had thrown himself upon the frozen earth, and gently raised him in his strong arms.