“What would you, Dominique?” I inquired, in tones of deep despondency.
“Vengeance!” exclaimed the negro, in a voice of thunder. “Leave to woman’s hands the duties owing to the dead, and let us together hunt down the murderers. Vengeance! vengeance!”
The voice of my faithful follower changed at once the current of my thoughts. I raised myself, looked proudly round, and called for food and wine. I ate bread—‘twas a form; I drank wine—that was reality. I seized my rifle, dagger, pistols; Dominique armed the hardiest of my slaves; and, before the sun rose, we set out to visit blood for blood.
I was absent for three days and nights. I started warmly on the death-chase, and never was one more keenly followed up. I seemed insensible to fatigue—heat, hunger, thirst were disregarded. Of five-and-twenty vigorous axe-men, accustomed from infancy to forest-life, by the second evening eighteen were worn out, and unable to proceed; and yet I and Dominique—and he with a wounded arm—pursued the traces of the murderers with unabated ardour. I ate not, slept not, but drank brandy and shed blood. Seven of the eight had already perished; but that eighth one lived; and without that ruffian’s life, my vengeance was incomplete. On we went once more, and the human hunt continued.
We found the wretch, at last, stretched beneath a tree—worn down, impassive, unresisting. I drew a pistol from my belt—looked at the doomed one for a moment. Three had fallen, resisting, by my hand: as many more by Dominique’s.
“No,” I said, as I replaced the weapon; “desire the slaves to string that felon up; thou and I, my friend, cannot stoop to be his executioners!”
I returned—witnessed the obsequies of my wife. That scene was too much for one already excited by maddening influences; my senses wandered—and memory deserts me.
Along, long gloomy epoch follows—ten years; long, long years! Mine was a melancholy state of being; for they neither could call me mad, nor yet pronounce me sane. My child was placed in a neighbouring convent: she grew—was happy; and became, as the nuns averred, the favourite pensionnaire of a dozen. I saw her seldom; for when I did, the striking likeness between her and her angel-mother for days unsettled reason. Meanwhile, worldly events went prosperously; and, Heaven knows, without the slightest wish to increase possessions already more than enough to defray every desire and want, still wealth flowed in upon me; and, in the list of rich Chilian proprietors, my name stood high.
There was one period of the year when my reason was invariably disturbed; the anniversary of Camilla’s murder. The whole of the events attendant on that frightful tragedy came back to memory; and the scene was vivid to the imagination as if it were really being again enacted. All was before my eyes—darkness and fire; slaughter; the death chase; the funeral; and then insanity closed the fearful drama. The domestics were always prepared for this awful season; and Dominique remained with me like my shadow.
It chanced that a week before this sad anniversary, an English botanist passed a country-house, where I was for the time residing, and, stopping with me as a guest, he observed the gloom and depression of my manner. Having delicately inquired the cause, and made himself master of all the circumstances connected with the appalling visitation which I expected in another week, he asked permission to remain. This was granted,—and, directing his attention to the peculiar symptoms of my disease, he at once pronounced it curable. This bold assertion startled my household, who, for ten years, had witnessed the annual return of my insanity, and always accompanied, as it was, with unabated violence. But he seemed confident; and I felt a secret assurance that, through the instrumentality of this man’s skill, Heaven’s mercy was about to be extended to me, and that blest gift, reason, would be eventually restored. I placed myself, and all upon my establishment, during the approaching period of my mental aberration, under the absolute direction of the stranger.