PZ 3 v . - THE IDLER OF THE ALPS, AND HIS WANDERINGS. By DONALD MAC LEOD. 1 vol. 12iuo, cloth. $1 25. " We have certainly since Thacakary, liad no such pleasant tourist ; incidents, adventures, comic as well as serious, anecdotes, descriptions, poetry, and satire are most happily inter, mingled, and the result is as delightful a volume for a sumn.er day or a winter evening as we have seen for a long time." Philadelphia Evening bulletin. " This is an eminently clever and readable work, which we venture to predict will at once secure its author a distinguished place among American writers. It is a fi&e tissue of humour, wit and adventure, pathos and description, woven into just enough of acting and moving story to create a lively interest." Graham s Magazine. "This is a work of decided genius; witty, observant, finely descriptive and poetical, - a kind of travelling idyl, sung out easily, and for the pleasure of singing, by one whose heart was full of the stir, associations, and beauty of European life." N. Y. Evangelist. " This is no ordinary book. It is written by one who has the eye and the heart of a true poet ; and the transatlantic scenes which pass in review before the writer are touched with corresponding lights and shadows, making each one of them a picture, and every picture a gem." Knickerbocker Magazine. "A kind of prose Childo Harold, in which the choice scenes of a Continental Tour are etrurg upon the silken thread of a graceful and lively narrative." Christian Inquirer, " Tliis is a quaint, chatty, and graphic book of travels, full of gems of pathos, humour, fancy, and brilliant delineation," Watchman and Observer. "This is a charming book, abounding with wit and humour, but abounding also in genuine pathos. 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LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. By DOICALD MAC-LEOD. 1 vol. 12rao. with Portrait. $1. " This is a model biography. The author has delineated the character of him once styled the Great Unknown, so that all who read these pages may know him and cher ish for him a personal attachment." Christian Intelligencer. "This is a most delightful and even fascinating volume. Its fascination consists in the clear flow of its narration, warm with a glowing love for its subject, and all over gemmed with racy and sparkling anecdote. " It tells the story of the great wizard s life with simple directness, condensing the more elaborate narratives of others, and culling from them only the more salient and spicy facts of his biography, thus making it one of the agreeable books of the season." Watchman and. Observer. "We can but commend this work to our readers as one of unflagging interest, from the beginning to the end ; written in language simple but often exceedingly pictur esque, and always in keeping with the particular theme in hand." Knickerbocker "A fresher, pleasanter, more vivacious biography we have seldom read." Temp. Courier. " We should not be surprised if this Life of the Author of Waverley finds as many readers as any thing which has before been written about the true Wizard of the North. " The Presbyterian. "It is written with great care and judgment, and portrays the remarkable career of the great novelist, with an exactness and fidelity that renders it as valuable as a work of reference, as it is interesting in its subject." Home Gasette. " With a loving, reverential spirit, and a fair power of discernment, he has drawn a graceful outline of the personal life and character of Sir Walter. It is peculiarly a ( book for the people, and as such has its charms ; and yet no one, however familiar he "may be with the Great Magician of the North, will read it without pleasure." 2f. Y. Courier and Enquirer. " This is the very book to be in the hands of every lover of biography, and every admirer of the genius of the great and good Scott." 2f. Y. Mirror. AMERICAN LITERATURE AND MANNERS. By PHILARETTE CHASLES, Prof, in the College of France. 1 vol. 12mo. $1. Lively, Philosophical, and Discriminating Criticisms on American Authors in every Department in Literature, viz : Audubon, Bryant, Brockden, Brown, Cooper, Emerson, Jonathan Edwards, Longfellow, Benjamin Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, Haliburton, Hoffman, Irving, Jefferson, Melville, Paulding, Puffer Hopkins,? etc., etc., with Chap ters on American Politics, American Manners, American Travellers, English Travel lers in America, American Women, the Future of America, etc. etc. " This brilliant and vigorous volume should be read for its happy flashes of original thought." Graham s Magazine. " The author shows a wonderfully profound acquaintance with our best authors, and goes often deep into the philosophy of our manners and institutions. The style is al ways sprightly, and combines the vividness of poetry with the depth of philosophy." Christian Intelligencer. THIED THOUSAND. THE SECTOR OF ST. B ARD9LPH S ; OE, SUPERANNUATED. By F. W. SHEL- TON, A. M. 1 vol. 12ino. price $1. Though its hero is a parson, the story is not what is technically called a "religious novel." It is far, however, from being an irreligious one. Mr. Shelton, while giving his satire full play with the oddities of human nature, the humors of the choir, the scandal of the tea- table, the eccentricities of parsons, the petty annoyances to which the Kector is subjected from carping parishioners, the potency of crack sermons, knows how to treat sacred things with becoming respect" Literary World. " We knew this must be a book worth reading when we saw the author s name. His pen makes marks that we love to see." New York Observer. " What most strikes one in this book is the quiet, penetrative, microscopic analysis of character. The author daguerreotypes. There are all sorts of people in this book; American Mrs Jellabys, who "keeps their eyes fixed on Africa;" Dorcas Society people volunteer female choristers ; the advisers, theologians, polemicals and outside chantarians, and all are well painted by that exquisite pen which warned us in " Salander," and delights as in " Letters from up the River." Knickerbocker. " This simple but beautiful sketch is worthy a place in literature by the side of the " Vi car of Wakefield " and the " Poor Vicar." Newburyport Herald. " Almost another Vicar, as described by Zschokke or Goldsmith." Evening Mirror. "Characterized by the peculiarities of this favorite and delightful writer." Efapress, " There is a good deal of the texture of Episcopacy running through the book, and one or two very hard things are said of Calvinism, but the latter things may be forgiven, on the ground that the writer does not seem to have been well read-up in Cslvinistic theolo - gy. Take it altogether, it is very true to the real life of many of the clergy." Presbyterian. " If any one loves a quiet, simple narrative a kind of combination of Goldsmith and Miss Edgeworth, but a first stratum below the combination this book will suit his or her taste," New Orleans Daily Crescent. "Mr. Shelton is a charming writer, and this is his best book yet" National democrat "One whose writings discover a profound knowledge of men and things." Albany Argus. "He has a ready and inexhaustible/und of humor in the genuine article, pure and fresh as the honey from Mount Hybla" Mobile Advertiser. " This volume has a thousand hits. 1 Poittand Christian Mirror. " The venerable rector has a kind of Vicar of Wakefield simplicity. It would be a good book for every church library, and not a few would find their lineaments reflected in its life-like pages." N. Y. Evangelist. " The characters are sharply cut, and stand out with a prominence that mark the hand of a master." Daily. " We are glad once more to take up a book by the author of Salander. He is an origi nal thinker and a vigorous writer, and his works have always some hidden meaning or moral that exercises the reader s ingenuity." St. Louis Presbyterian, MR. F. W SHELTON S NEW WORK. UP THE RIVER. By F. W. SHELTON, 1 vol. 12mo. With 36 elegant engravings from original designs. $1 25. " It is full of the country : trees, wave, and the sweet breath of the new-mown hay is therein, with touches of pathos, humor, and good-hearted feelings, while, through all, in a hidden stream of melody, like a clear rill, tuns the ever-varying, cunning, facile style of one of the most captivating imagery writers of the day." N. Y. Daily Times. "Chatting of every day country life in a style of freshness and navicte." N. Y. Tribune. " There are few books in which the English language is written with such purity and taste, and we cordially commend tbis book to all who love the charms which nature to her votary yields. Springfield Republican. VENICE THE CITY OF THE SEA. From the Invasion of Napoleon in 1797 to the Capitulation to Eadetzky in 1819. With a coternporaneous view of the Peninsula. By Edmund Flagg, late Consul of the United States at the Port of Venice. 2 vols. 12ino, with Map and seven Engravings. $2 50. 2d edition. " lie has put forth a work, which for clearness of diction and elegance of style, for order and method in its arrangement, for the perspicuity of its military details, and for its display of an intimate knowledge of the historical and political events to be recorded, is hacdly equalled by any similar work of the present day. This history, in the romantic interest which attaches to the City of the Terrible Ten. and in its details of heroic valor and en during fortitude in the midst of famine and bombardment, cf pestilence and blockade, will favorably corapaie with Prescott s Conquest of Mexico/ WasJiinyton Union. "Mr. Flagg s elegant production is the result of several years of experience, study and compilation of all that is most lovely and romantic of that charming and supernatural City of Venice, The painting of scenes and incidents in the City of the Sea, has a great deal of the grace and the gentle beauty of Washington Irving s most familiar and popular writings." St Louis Intelligencer. " When we opened Mr. Flagg s book we found a carefully compiled, poetically written digest of tho history of that glorious old Venice, its Doges, its Councils, its glory and its loves, and a passionate, thrilling, yet accurate and sympathising account of the last struggle for Independence. The Knickerbocker. These volumes exhibit thorough research, careful observation, and a discriminating use of materials. The style is animated, and the descriptive passages are sometimes highly graphic and picturesque." Jf. Y. Independent. "He writes with frankness and intelligence, never grows prosy; and his vivid portrait ures impress themselves on the memory." 2f. Y. Tribune. Mr. Flagg has embodied in these volumes information concerning Venice which has long been sought for. They will prove invaluable to the student as well as to the politi cian, as books of reference. This work is written in a graceful and pleasing style, not stiffly historical nor too highly wrought but truthful and forcible. No Library will be complete without this book." Buffalo Journal. " These handsome volumes are full of interest and instruction, combining as they do many of the excellencies and advantages of history and travels." Boston Traveller. "One of the most sprightly and entertaining works issued from the press of modern times" N. Y. Atlas. "The author has treated his romantic iheme with the admiration of the poet, and yet with the fullness of information and ; ccuracy of the historian." Putnam s Magazine. "These volumes give with the romance all the solid facts, the sober reality of a city which has not its parallel in the world. American Courier. "This work is more than a mere history. It is a graphic account of the present condi tion of Venice, its churches, public buildings, institutions, social customs and political af fairs. * * * Mr. Fla<:g writes like a scholar of refined taste, and like a historian of sound .judgment" Evening Bulletin. "This is the most thorough and satisfactory account of Venice,, that we have ever met we suspect the best in the English language, or probably in any other. Albany Argus. "Mr. Flagg writes like a scholar of refined taste and like a historian of sound judg ment. His book is deeply interesting as a narrative and highly valuable as a contribution to history." Philadelphia, Evening Bulletin. " It is the only reliable account yet published of the late memorable seige of Venice, fully and impartially chronicled gemmed with anecdotes and traits of character and as interesting as a romance. Times. " This book will be read and quoted when many a better one is forgotten. It is valua ble." # Y. DaMy Times. THE CZAB: HIS COTJET AND PEOPLE, Including a tour in Norway>nd Sweden. By JOHN 8. MAXWELT, pp. 868. 1 vol. 12mo. . * V THE BLOODSTONE. BY tat f Mr, ATJTHOB OP " PYNNSHURST," "Lira OP SIB WALTBB SCOIT," ETC. NEW YORK: _f , CHARLES SCRIBNER, 145 NASSAU STREET. 1853. , Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, by CHARLES SCRD3NER, in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Sou hern District Df New York. TOBITT S COMBINATION-TYPE, 181 William-st. .* . f- * * * > V TO -0 1U MY BELOVED AND ONLY SISTER, AS A MARK OF THANKS THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. * *- , PREFA CE. MY DEAR SISTEB: As this book is dedicated to you, and as you are the only affectionate and uncritical reader of whom I feel very sure, it is proper that any necessary word of explanation should be said to you. During my residence on the Rhine, in 1850, much of my time was gpent in quaint old Andernach, and one of my favorite haunts was precisely such a ruined keep as I have described in the following pages. Many a long hour of reverie have I spent within its cedar-crested, ivy- hung dilapidated walls : many a time have I dreamed of it since my return, and the chief incident in this story, told in Chapter XV., was a veritable "vision of the night." vi. PREFACE. Andernach, the ruin and its name, are the only reali ties I can offer you. For the rest, a distempered dream, worked out by after meditation, makes up this story, such as it is. In the early portions of the work you will recognize some old familiar places and scenes, well known to the childhood of both of us. It may be too that you will recognize one or more portraits. Be that as it may, you will be a gentle reader, and will wish well to this new renture of YOTJB, AFFECTIONATE BKOTHEK. NEW YOIIK, Oct. 4th, 1853. ^ZW* * 1f ;V*V,* <ri, ,_ "-*i j: * CONTENTS. I. Introductory * 11 II. Reminiscences 14 III. Home Friends 21 v * . IV. Corrumbling ... *... 32 V. Character . ... .41 1 . .- . VI. Leaving Home * . . . 64 VII. UeberSee . ,_^. . . . " . 68 f* 80 " * * * r i IX. The Bloodstone 91 X. Misunderstandings . ^^B*- ... 98 XL Cleared Up J ,1 ^ . 115 r ^ * XII. Initiation 123 XIII. Woe and Joy J^ % . ... .136 XIV. The Spots upon the Bloodstone . . .147 A " CONTENTS. XV Results 160 XVI. The Power of one Hasty Deed . . . 171 XVII. Caspar Hefferman . . . . . .179 XVHI. Mother and Sister 189 XIX. The Last Trial 200 XX. Conclusion ....... 210 - -fc. V* *^, THE BLOODSTONE. | r Hat i ah YES, I, Paul Calvert, will wi ite a history of my own life : a story of the passions, joys, sorrows, accidents, incidents, observations and circumstances which have concurred in making up my existence, that drop in the ocean of eternity. To feel the desire of writing such a book, is a very good sort of reason for doing it. What my heart has felt, your s can feel. Some one has probably jostled you just as I have -been jostled * . * 12 THE BLOODSTONE. has pleased you just as I have been pleased. "We are both men, fond of what is pleasant to us, sorrowful at what incommodes us. We are broth ers, walking with more or less wisdom, more or less bravery,, through suffrance and enjoyment, towards the solemn Hereafter. In a word, shall I not touch your heart when I play upon the strings of my own ? When I say, O friend, I too have loved and acted and sor rowed and enjoyed ? For it is true. I have ex perienced most of the feelings which we know to be human : smiles have beamed brightly upon my face : and big tears also have rolled heavily, in deep mournfulness, over my cheek, while the strong painful throbs of my heart kept time to them, as the tap of the muffled drum keeps time to the falling drops when they bury a soldier in the rain. . - ,-f ;., .**> There are some mei., who, when their hearts are full, can take a musical instrument, and on the wings of harmony which they evoke from it, can float away into pure, calmer skies, higher up, nearer to God. Others go out into the world, and play upon V i - Y ? * - .^- -*" PREFATIAL. 13 that, many-chorded harp which we name society, or they give themselves to be played upon by so ciety and so empty out their inner sorrow. And I find my heart full and wish to write A human life, even the humblest one, i a solemn thing and cannot be uninstructive. We know Who gave it ; to whom it shall be rendered ; and there is a deep and holy lesson in every life his tory, from that which hath endured in its strong grandeur like a centenary oak, to that which only blossomed and vanished like a lily of the valley by the side of a brook. , * > -w* >. TI-. *^ " . II. fT^HERE are earlier recollections of me than JL my own. I have been told, on creditable authority that of my nurse, a worthy old Scotchwoman, principally remarkable for a great stock of patience and a large mole upon her nose that the first two years of my existence were occupied by crying and eating. It is possible ; but I do not give it upon my own respon sibility I am indeed unwilling to commit myself to any . ^ , . .4, - REMINISCENCES. 15 statement, before the advent of my first remem bered jacket and trousers, which were devel oped, I suppose, about my fifth year. They were light grey with bell buttons, and were much injured the first day they were worn, in conse quence of a propensity of mine to slide down the roof of the ice-house. New York was not then what it now is. I remember that my parents, who lived near the Bowling Green in winter, never dreamed of walking to our country-seat at Greenwich, and if a knot of boys made a visit there during the cold months it was the work of an entire day ; and now the most delicate walk four times tho * distance daily and think nothing of it. After my father s death, which happened when I was some seven years old, the town house was sold and we lived altogether at Greenwich, then a sparse collection of gentlemen s country seats, but which grew up rapidly to villagehood and is now almost in the middle of the city. Through a long lane, full of sweet brier and wild rose bushes, which ran through our orchard, you reached the great gate of the garden along the front of which ran a double avenue of lom- bardy poplars, leading to the stables and offices; but turning in at the gate, you drove through 16 THE BLOODSTONE. another avenue of large blaek cherry trees, under the shadow of which throve a border of luxuriant box, up td the large, wide porch. The house, of two stories with a basement, was composed of two wings and a famous old fashioned hall. In one of the wings were the drawing rooms ; in the other -the library and a sleeping chamber. Above this were five pleasant rooms, and highest of all the garret, a play ground of unequalled magnificence, which occu pied half the floor, the other half being a huge mysterious black hole full of lumber and spooks, enterable only by a door some three feet square cut high up in the wall. Then we bad the vast flat roof above us, unrivalled for the flying of kites ; and priceless as a vantage ground from whence to pelt any casual interloper below with -hard apples and turnips. Here I diligently pursued the two above mentioned amusements, and here I used to lie on my back for hours, reading Don Quix- otte, or Robinson Crusoe. Then I would descend and rob the kitchen of some new tin pot or pan which I would vainly strive to fashion into a helmet, or would retire into some distant corner of the grounds, make myself a desert island of * REMINISCENCES. 17 my own, build myself a cabin, and sigh for a goat, a monkey and a man Friday. On one single day, Robinson and the Don each procured me well boxed ears ah me, it is long ago, but how fresh in my memory the first because I cut up and fashioned a sleigh robe into a dress of skins ; and the second because I split a kitchen coffee pot in half to make greaves of, as became a would-be knight of la Mancha. All round the house extended the gardens , and beyond them, the fields for pasture, vegeta bles or grain. At the east corner of the old mansion, grew a gigantic apple tree .; big, brown rusty coats it bore, and many a day have I per illed my neck by getting from the edge of the roof upon its branches. In other places I remember apricot, pear and plum trees, and one strange fruit, called the blood peach, shadowed the well. In front, I have said, at the end of the poplar walk, were the stables, and a large thing called the " office," built by somebody in yellow fever times, but now surrendered, the lower stories to us children, the upper to the pigeons. Creeping up among the birds and looking out of the holes cut for their convenience, you saw, at the other end of the poplars, the porter s lodge. 18 THE BLOODSTONE. If, returning to the house, you passed through the broad hall, out upon the long back piazza, you looked through the fruit trees over a sweep of greensward, across the alder-bordered creek, upon a very pretty scene ; grainfields, a remnant of forest and a visible country seat or two. On the left, the long cedar rows and brier bushes of sentimental Love lane extended; on the right, rose the majesty of Green hill crowned by the Sailors Snug Harbor, and the Stuyvesant meadows stretched off towards East river ; and looking straight forward from the back piazza you saw the tall old willows and the low white stones that studded that " field and acre of our God," where so many of our loved ones slept, loved ones who had grown weary and were lying there at rest. And now .what is there ? But populous brick built streets ; thronged with trade, fetid with vile air ; full of strife and mean envy and wild hate. The brook is filled up, the tall trees haye fallen, the flowers have long since been rooted up, the home of my childhoood is a desolate den of pau pers, the hearts of those, who loved me are in the dust of the grave, and I, alone, and having much suffered, am sitting a stranger, on the shores of the Rhine, recalling the gone days of my childhood. REMINISCENCES. 19 The brook that I have spoken of is an histori cal brook. It rose in Green hill, flowed through Greenwich and emptied into the Hud son : it abounded in eels, mud-turtles and garter- snakes, its banks were illustrious for elderberries and wild cherries: its coffee colored summer waters bore many a log or impromptu raft for sailing, and in winter felt the whizzing of the swift sled or echoed to the ring of the skater s iron heel. But still it was nothing to Cedar Creek, a mile away, where you could skate for leagues through the thick, low evergreens. Or to Green Hill itself where sledding was brought to a perfection which it had never before attained, and which I sadly fear it never will reach again. That was our glo rious battlefield where we waged relentless war with Bowery boys, in the cold months with snow balls, in summer with tomatoes and green apples, not always unmingled with stones. I saw my favorite schoolfellow struck down there with a fragment of flint, and even yet I can see his pale face and his bright hair drenched in blood. He was carried home to his mother and in a week or two he died. Were not the sides of that hill formed for caves in which to play the robber ? Have they . 9 THE BLOODSTONE. ever been equalled for ovens in which to roast plump apples and pilfered corn? And did not I hide there for one whole day to escape the wrath of my tutor, odd, old Doctor Robertson, an exag gerated Scotchman, learnedly quaint ? Peace be with thee Doctor, and with thee his amiable broad-nosed successor, Thaddeus Maloney. Peace be with you both ! for, alas, I fear I gave you but little of it while you were with me. -*. *->; v;^- .*,, t . III. 0m* IEECALL little of my father beyond his courtly, tall figure and very handsome face, and his very great indulgence for me. I remem ber his giving me one profound castigation for not returning a blow when struck by a boy twice my age, but, I remember still better his constant kindness and his prodigal generosity. I can see, too, the daylight coming feebly through the dark ened windows when he lay dead in the library, and the low voices and soft tread of all in the house return distinctly to me now as when I stood beside my mother, and looked up into 22 THE BLOODSTONE. her pale face, mute and tearless, in her depth of sorrow: . Then came the long procession, and the new black clothes, and the funeral paraphernalia, and the walk to the grave beneath the old willows. Ah, how many times have I taken that same slow, mournful walk since then, until nearly all my kindred had been laid there. Saddest of all this, that I shall not rest beside them. From that day my mother wore the close widow s cap ; and the luxuriant, black, silken hair was hidden ; and the gloomy weeds covered her heart mournful but resigned in its bereave ment. Full of all tender charities in word, ac tion and thought loving and being beloved, she lived on, gradually withdrawing herself from society, and devoting her life to me and to our poorer neighbors. For them she was an angel visiting the earth. " When the ear heard, then it blessed her : when the eye saw, it gave witness to her, because she delivered the poor that cried, the fatherless and the helpless. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon her, and she caused the widow s heart to sing for joy." I do not know whether other people have such odd thoughts in the midst of their sadness as I HOME FRIENDS. 23 have. I am very affectionate and impassioned and, I believe, would die of a great sorrow were it not for the funny ideas that get into my head in times of deep affliction. I was sitting up once at night beside the body of my dearest friend, and despite every effort I could make, could recall nothing of him but the droll things he used to say to me ; and I felt the smile upon my face, and even several times de tected a low merry chuckle. Once or twice that night somebody came in to beg me to go to bed, and then the idea of separation would awaken a fervent burst of grief; but when I was alone again, back came the funny thoughts ; and so it continued until he had been buried two or three days And now that I am thinking of my dead mo ther, I try to recall some of the many loving acts of hers, yet for the life of me I cannot get out of my head one which sticks by me and haunts me as though it were the only one. It is her con solation in the case of Mrs. Booze. Mrs. Booze was an old lady who smelled of peppermint and used to come once a week to see us. I think she had been a schoolmistress in earlier life. She wore a large cap with a puffy border, with false black hair under it, and im- *> 24 THEBLOODSTONE. mense, round, tortoise-shell spectacles, from be hind which glowed two fierce black eyes. Oh, what a horror I had of that old lady ! She used to take me up on her brown silk lap ; hold me firmly there with hands which looked like the claws of the griffins in my father s big books of heraldry, and, in that position, make me recite my catechism. I remember that I used to think she was some relation to Justification, which was always my hard point. "When I had accomplished my task she used to give me three peppermint drops, which I would take and throw away behind the parlor organ. Alas ! one day she saw me and called me back. " Come here, little boy." And when I approached, trembling, her claws lifted me up upon her knees, and she spoke in the most unmodulated and stony voice I have ever heard, somewhat as follows. " Are you a good little boy ? No ! Good little boys never throw away peppermints. Don t you know that God does not love little boys who throw away the necessities of life. Little boys who throw away peppermints never go to Heaven ! Get down, little boy." Then she took away her claws, and left me HOMEFB. IENDS, 25 without any support upon her brown silk knees. Those knees were very high, and my round little legs were very short, and seemed to me to be at least a quarter of a mile from the floor, so I sate there in terror, looking at a bunch of flowers in the carpet, and wishing they would grow up to me as Jack the Giant-Killer s beanstalk grew in Nurse Nanny s story. Then I felt myself slip ping towards the point, and slowly and full of terror, I slid on until after one vain grasp at the slippery silk, off I went crack upon her feet. I thought from her look, she was going to murder me, and began to wonder where she would hide my body, and whether my mother would ever find it, and whether Mrs. Booze would be hanged for it. She thought better of it, however, and depart ed, leaving me to pace the room thoughtfully, and to try to make my short legs reach from one bunch of woven flowers to the other without touching the plain ground of the carpet. The next time Mrs. Booze paid us a visit, she had the recitation as usual, and, at the conclusion gave me as reward, not three peppermint drops, but three of those round, flat, white, hard-pressed peppermint lozenges which old ladies take for the 3 . .. 26 THE BLOODSTONE. eholic, which are purchasable only at the apothe cary s shop and which are -so fearfully strong. As I made a motion to slide down, the claws held me fust, and the stony voice said, " Eat your peppermints, little boy." I dared not disobey, but oh, how enormously . -ijk t * I suffered. The tears came into my eyes; my mouth, throat and stomach were on fire, and I *- v should indubitably have died of the third lozenge, had my mother not come in and rescued me.- <^ IF ^ * Mother darling, the snows of. many a winter have fallen upon thy grave, and my heart has been cold and desolate without thee ; but the flowers of many a spring have grown and bloomed above thee also, ns types of resurrection and hopes that we shull meet again. I never knew any violets that bloomed so early as those that grew on my mother s grave. I used to fancy it was the warmth of her heart that quickened them. Yet now I can recall nothing but my rescue from the claws of the griffin, Mrs. Booze. Next to my mother s memory comes that of my sweet, brown-eyed, black-haired sister Flora, who strengthened me when I was alone, support ed me when I suffered, won me back when 1 strayed, defended rne when attacked, loved me HOME FRIENDS. 27 * i fc < through all my fortunes. It is partly for her that I write this book now. Other persons come before me. One indis tinctly ; my mother s maid, called by her Mar tha ; but the rest of the household named her Marthy, all save old black Soc who called her Martyr. Of her I only remember that she was kind to me and very pretty, that her uncle was a milkman, and that one day she got married to a man with one eye who had been a soldier, and was to me something between Cesar and the Duke of Marl borough. More distinctly can I see thy face, faithful- lest of friends, my good old Soc. He had been my grandmother s coachman, and was now whatever he chose to be gardener, porter, groom, waiter, or my own especial valet. The lord of the kitchen, the stable-yard and the play ground ; ranking in his own estimation imme diately after his mistress, looking upon Flora and myself as dependent for our existence upon his guardianship, and considering the rest of the household as very immeasurably inferior to him self. He had been baptized Socrates, but the name had been found too long, and, after undergoing 28 THE BLOODSTONE. the gradations of Socky, Cratty and Ratty, had at last settled down into Soc. He was an un commonly black nigger ; not shiny, but a dead black, a lamp-black, all but the palms of his hands, which were tha color of dried orange-peel. He had beautiful eyes, as large, soft, loving and dark as ever beamed from the sockets of a ga zelle ; but his black hide made the white so evi dent that most people did not see their beauty. His nose was a wonderful nose ; very broad, and, despite a tendency to be plump, very flat; it was like a hyacinth root grown between a couple of bricks bulbous but squashed. His mouth was the heart of a ripe watermelon, only the seeds were white. It went straight across his face for a great many inches in width, and was> when closed, so very wide and so very red, that I used to fancy sometimes that he had been made without a mouth, but that somebody had cut one on his countenance with a scythe. His wool was slightly grizzled, for he was some sixty years old when I first knew him, and he used to boast that he was " de fust nigger ever held Missus in his arms," " Missus " being my mother. Add to this a figure six feet two inches in height, with whip-cords for nerves, and HOME FRIENDS. 29 ! . * Bteel bands for muscles, animated by a faithful devoted heart, a azur (Tor, a golden heart, as the French say, and you have an idea of him who called himself " Mr. Soc Calvert." He used to call me Massa Pol, and indeed the pronunciation of my Christian name was very va ried. My dear mother said "Paul," Flora and my cousins " Polly." Martha called me Mister Porl ; Dr. Eobertson said " Pole ye ne er-do- weel," and Tbaddeus Maloney " Powl ye divil." Only one more friend have I to recall, and then the chief actors on the stage of my childhood will all have been named. The last friend, to whom I am twice indebted for my life, is Hashby my dog: the most loving, faithful, brave creature in the world. , , I remember who gave him to me, a mere puppy and a Newfoundland puppy, that is a lump of black hair without any particular shape, or any distinct qualities, except a violent tendency to tumble over, to tear mufls, hearth-rugs and mats to pieces, to worry fur caps and young kittens, to take his most intimate acquaintances for entire strangers, and to bark at them witn as. much fe rocity as though his life depended on it. As he grew older, his form began to appear 30 THE BLOODSTONE. and the white star on his breast grew large. Till this time he had been " Puppy," but after that I teased every body for a name. Cesar, Pompey, Neptune, Giaour, Corsair were all proposed and rejected. Nelson had a chance of carrying the day, but Triton drove it out of my head. At last he got named as follows. I was teasing my good old tutor for a befitting title, and had alrea dy vetoed six, when the dog bounded between two hounds that were quarrelling for a bone, made a snap at each and carried off the prey. " What shall I call him, Doctor ?" " Whisht ! and don t bother me Pole," said the old man ; " ca him Maher-shal-al-hash-baz, for he maketh speed to divide the spoil. See Esaias aught chapter first and third verses." So Maher shal-al-hash-baz was he called and that significant title was gradually shortened into Hashby, a name borne by four successive genera tions which have grown up under my fosterage. This is perhaps a good deal to say about a dog; but just think of the thoroughness of a dog s affection ! How he gives heart, body and will up to the master : how, oVave and defying to others, he crawls to lick your feet even when you have treated him cruelly : how he pines in your sickness, and when you die, thrills the souls of * * " HOME FRIENDS. 31 the watchers by his long moujnful howls beneath the window : nay, how he will often refuse sus tenance, and go and stretch himself out upon your grave, and die there broken hearted, faith ful unto death ! v;* ^*. A :*-::v-:4^; - i^l iff i^^^^ . .^jjf ;< -; f - . ,- - % "A . IV. WHEN Life s dreary winter months begin ; and the winds grow cold, and the snows lie heavily ; and the green leaves are fallen and the boughs are bare ; before the soul draws with in itself and is occupied only with thoughts of the new and eternal spring-time which shall follow the resurrection, the eye is turned back to the pleasant swards and green dingles and murmur ing brooks of childhood to the shores that we have left behind ; to the fairy " land which is very CoRRUMBLING. 33 far off, ! and we can look out through the dimmed windows of age, and though all be naked and chill around us, we can see, far away, the glow of the golden sunshine bright upon the scenes of our youth. Memory of the Past, Hope of the Future; these are God s comforters, which he giveth to our declining years. There was, beyond our orchard and at the foot of the long lane, a huge, yellow frame house, wherein some fifty boys were lodged, fed and taught. The ancient tawse presided in that es tablishment wielded by a strong Scotch arm : Latin with broad pronunciation, and English less carefully instilled, were beaten there into the youthful MIND. flow well I remember the vast main-room to which one ascended by a staircase on the outside of the house. "What a motley group of bright- eyed American boys, fresh-faced young England- ers always inclined to plumpness and tight trow sers ; swarthy young Spaniards from Cuba and Central America ; and now and then the odd red-haired face of a canny lowland Scot ; or the rollicking wide-mouthed physiognomy of a youth ful Paddy. Just by the door sate three hand some, brown-eyed, haughty young Highlanders from the Hebrides, and next to them a quaint 34 THE BLOODSTONE. prim little Quaker, the only specimen of his kind which we possessed. Perhaps twenty of these fellows were day scholars, " from the surrounding country seats. Of such were my cousins and I. And there in black, everlasting knee-breeches, square coat and big buckled shoes, sat old Andrew Smith, the lord of all ; or there paced his stalwart son Jim my, swinging the tawse, or, on great occasions, the half of a waggon truce. I can recall a thousand scenes in that huge room, and about that school ; but I wjll not. A school-boy s life is ever much the same. Routine influences his studies, rewards and floggings his sports are all traditional. Base, house-ball, and -football ; knuckle-all-over, or peg in tho ring ; marble shooting in the big ring, the little ring or the hole ; attack and defence of snow forts, swim ming parties ; boring little holes in the desk to be tilled with slate-pencil powder, and puffed sud denly into an unwary eye : the crooked pin placed beneath the neighbor; the partnerships in apples and taffy ; the wrestlings, boxing-matches and foot-races ; even the arena feats of standing on the head, or walking on the hands with heels in the air behold, were not all these things done iu the times of old ? will they not be renewed CORRUMBLING. 35 * by them who shall come after us ? There is no thing new under the sun. Of course, we day-scholars were privileged mortals. When three o clock struck, school-law ceased to huve dominion over us, and we were freemen until nine the next morning. Therefore were we held in great estimation by the board ers who coveted invitations for Saturday anv5 Sunday to our comfortable homes, remission from discipline and school fare, and, the bigger ones, the society of our sisters or girl cousins. Oh, Green hill! the frolics that your green top and yellow sandy sides have witnessed. The fierce engagements ; the extempore pic nics. Or when the Angel of the Snow passed above the land, and shook from his feathery wings the downy multitudinous flakes, how whizzed the rapid sled down the long descent, shot o er the brook, and sped across the plain till it brought up at Dr. Graham s garden wall ke bunk ! Then skating upon Jenning s pond there did not Dick Joel break through in the middle, and catch, hand over hand, at the crumbling edge, which broke at every grasp until he reached the shore. And poor Gonzales, too, fell ip at the same place, and was drawn under the ice, and never saw his warm Cubao 6un, nor fragrant 36 THE BLOODSTONE. orange groves, nor the blue sparkling southern sea again. I wonder that I am living now to recall these things. I came very near dying about this pe riod ; and my recovery had so singular an agen cy that I will even set the story down. It was during the reign of worthy Dr. Robert son, who was retained to further me in my school acquirements, nominally ; but really in benevo lence for the odd, learned old creature was one of those who never make their way in the world, whether by accident or otherwise. He was hot tempered, but physically and rheumatically slow ; and I, lithe and quick as a young leopard, would play some trick on him, and then bound through the window or door, and lead him a famous chase. Sometimes I would dodge him around the pump ; sometimes climb a tree, and strad dling some huge bough tease him from my van tage ground. Once I remember taking refuge under the big. porch, where he poked at me with a long stick as though I had been a rat, for a quarter of an hour. On such occasions, my ap proving audience was generally old Soc ; who never could be prevailed upon to aid the doctor in my capture. One tower of strength I possessed unknown to +*r - % : - V r * Co R RUMB LTNG. 37 any body but myself. A favorite place of refuge from the angry tutor was the roof of the stable, where I would sit astride and mock at him. Then the doctor would laboriously bring a lad der, mount to the eaves, and dislodge me with a fishing-pole, whereupon I would roll off on the other side and mysteriously disappear. Then the doctor would descend and go about the stable looking for me in vain. Even when there was fresh snow upon the ground, not a footstep or trace of me was visible. The roof was sound there was no scuttle, nor was it approachable from any other side than the one guarded by the doctor so that where I went to was mysterious beyond human endurance. The secret was this. On the side of the stable at which I would disappear stood a large hay stack about six feet lower than the eaves. In the very centre of this I had bored a hole down to the very bottom, and into this I used to drop after rolling off the roof upon the hay. Many a time has the doctor from below thrashed the top of the stack with the lithe pole ; many a time has he looked from the stable windows on a level with the stack to see if I were on the top of it but in vain ; I was invisible. One warm day towards the close of summer, I 38 THE BLOODSTONE. had performed some trick, made my escape, and taken refuge in my tower. I had enjoyed the doctor s futile endeavors to discover ray where abouts and his subsequent retreat; and I was moving about, when I felt something yielding be neath my feet. I shuddered, -and sprang at the cross stick above me, and caught it but it broke with my weight ; and then I heard a .horrid hiss ing, and a vile black snake some four feet long twined up my legs and round my body, and held his flat head back,, looking at rae^ with his cold diamond eyes, and his forked tongue quivering between the scaly lips: Oh God ! what cold horror seized on me ! I strove to climb the sides, but the dry hay slipped beneath my tread, the sharp ends cut my face and hands, and the folds of the malicious and chill serpent tightened about me. Then it glided to my left arm, and 1 could use it no longer, lest I should bring the reptile nearer to my face. But I held it out straight before me. uttered a few screams of horror, and stood there icy and stiff. Old Soc had heard my screams, and whether he knew of my hiding place or not, discovered me and drew rne out. He led me in pale, silent, and with dilated eyes and whi^e parted lips to my mother ; but my senses were gone. I felt no* CORRUMBLING. 39 her warm embraces : the gentle bosom- that pil lowed my face only frightened me ; in the clasp of those loving arms, I felt again the folds of the snake I was paralyzed. For weeks I lay thus: dreaming and starting horrifieel from my dreams : cold and shivering evermore; nothing could warm me, nothing could bring a drop of relieving perspiration through the frozen pores. Now and then I would have an hour or two of relief, and of sense when I knew every body, and could talk or read a little. But the least thing in the world brought back the horror. The sight of a crooked tree-bough through the window ; the cord of the curtains ; the waving of a ribbon ; the long, brown curl falling on Florry s sweet face any thing almost brought back the dreadful reptile. 5 , At last Mrs. Baker saved me. Mrs. Baker was an old, sick nurse, who had been brought from I don t know where, to watch me. She was an odd old thing, smelling very strongly of alcohol, and always called me " lamb." One day when my mother was absent, I awoke calmly and looked about me. On a little stand at the foot of my bed stood a pint bottle empty, a cup and spoon, and some vials. A prodigious smell of brandy pervaded the room, and when I 40 THE BLOODSTONE. stirred, a wrinkled old face, framed in a heavy nightcap, stooped over me and said, " Well, Lamb." Where s Mama ?" I asked. " Gone away, down town, lamb but she U be back directly. Take a little drink, lamb, and then, lamb, I ll apply the fricture." " The what, nurse ?" " The fricture, my lamb. The doctor orders repose and frictures and the frictures is best." " Has it got a bad taste, nurse ?" " Lord love you," said Mrs. Baker, " frictures aint nothin to swaller they re rubbin , rubbin with flannel and sich. I uses frictures myself, for I m likeways subjek to chills and a dreadful co- rumbling in my innards." This expression struck me as very odd, and I began to laugh, and was still merry when my mother came in. " Why Paul," she said, kissing me " laugh ing ! I am glad to see that once more. Has he slept well, Mrs. Baker ? have you given him his medicine ?" . Then she glanced towards the stand and added, " But where is all the brandy ?" It was all used up, Mrs. Baker said, in the frictures for the lamb. My mother looked any thing but credulous, V CDRRUMBLING. 41 but Mrs. Baker stuck to it and as she gave my mother her place beside the -bed, and retired to wards the fireplace, she muttered to herself, " It s the friclures, ma am, as took it all. As for drinkin it, no ! I can t nor never could abear the taste of liquor, unless it was jest four drops of wintergreen for the co-rumbling." As I heard the word again, I burst out afresh ; until they thought I was delirious and my mo ther bent over me anxiously, " Why, Paul, darling, what is the matter ?" " Oh mama," I choked out, " I ve got such a co-rumbling !" Then my mother began to laugh till the tears rolled down her cheeks, and Flory came in and tried to get an explanation ; but the stuttering and interrupted attempts to answer set her off and we three shook with fun ; and a low cracked chuckle chimed in occasionally from the fireplace^ I laughed until I was both thirsty and sleepy ; and then swallowed a warm drink, and Mrs. Ba ker " frictured" me into a deep sleep. A violent perspiration broke out; my disease was conquer ed ; and I woke refreshed and renewed. A short period of convalescence was pleasantly passed ; and though for years afterward I could not see even an earth-worm or a caterpillar without a 42 THE BLOODSTONE. shudder, yet eventually I conquered the whole nervous irritability which had so nearly been the death of me. As for Mrs. Baker, I never saw her again ; she disappeared the next day, and I suppose that long before this, she and her co-rumbling have passed to another world. > Y. * . _ / ff\XWYWtibYG v^gaTft-lltis* **: "*-. rriHAT period of convalescence had, I suspect JL a very great influence on my after life. There are two sorts of education; that which a man gets from others, and that which he gives to him self. It is not true that so-called self-educated men, form a class apart. Every man, college-bred or otherwise, who attains distinction, is self-edu cated. In schools and universities there are out ward incidents attached to each step in inward culture ; and these incidents fix the recollection of that learning in the mind. But there are millions of hours, forgotten when we look back to our 44 THE BLOODSTONE. youth, which were devoted Jx) as deep and earn est a study as Rector or Professor ever required or obtained. These occur during our confine ment to the house ; during our ramble in the for est, our loiterings by the brook side; our moments, which when, reviewed through the distant and darkened glass of old age, seem to have been wasted moments. No one is too young to reflect. The busy and occupied youth lacks time, not capacity for med itation. Age is often wrong when it says to youth When thou hast seen my years, thou wilt be wise. A boy of seventeen, retiring in his habits or shunned by his mates, an isolated boy, is fifty times wiser, than the man of eighty, who has never had time to think. If rolling years have indented certain rude facts into the soul of the old man; it will not equal the results of the quick observation of fiery eyed youth. Hours, stolen from study, for the perusal of Robison Crusoe, in a quiet nook, have made men confirmed wanderers on the earth. I have known old men, who would defend and act up to a cer tain principle, yet deny its application to one par ticular case, which has occured in some story or circumstance of their boyhood. School and college studies advance by routine, - ~ ~ -_ V CHARACTERS. 45 and generally make as little impression as the daily and regular dinner. They nourish, it is true, but they leave no memory ; create no character istic. It is the pic-nic, the meal in the sail-boat, the feast upon stolen fruit which leave traces : what is done out of order, out of established abitude. I am convinced that many salient points of my character, which I have fancied innate, are results of my reading when alone ; on the housetop, in the extemporized cabin ; in the bosky glen ; in the sweet scented hay-loft ; in the wood ; in the still chamber of illness or convalescence. I had long been initiated into the mysteries of Don Quixotte, Gil Bias, le Diable Boiteux and Gulliver s travels ; but the corruption attendant upon all ancient and high civilization depicted in these works, had no effect upon me, I did not comprehend it ; nor had Swift s fierce sarcasm nor the irony of Cervantes any influence, I did not know of its existence. Gulliver interested me be cause of his adventures, and I loved the old Don with my whole heart. While still confined to my room, I made my earliest acquaintance with the Waverley Novels : first with the Talisman, and then with Ivanhoe. Those two works gave me a love for chivalry and * 46 THE BLOODSTONE. its age which I never have been able to overcome; and when to these were added the weird novels of de la Motte Fonque, "Aslauga s Knight," " Wild Love," and " The Magic King," which supplied to the Knight, what Scott had not given to him, the Christian element, the element of deep devotion, then the love grew deeper and was ed into a kind of principle, useful to^me in later life Now too, I read my first history, except of coiirse the dry school histories, learned and for gotten piece meal and by rote. It was Hume s narrative of the last attempt to restore the Stew arts to the throne of Great Britain. Every boy in the world, I suppose, is. a zealous Jacobite as far as Prince Charley is concerned. I was such not only because of his romantic history, but heredi tarily ; some of our own British kindred had fal len for him on the field and one on the scaffold. But what particularly interested me was the nar rative of his escape and wanderings through the Highlands. The devoted loyalty ; the resolute resistance of temptation displayed by his guides, often poor peasants, the horror with which the character of an informer was viewed : the fierce hatred of betrayal which was exhibited all these made a profound and enduring impression upon me. It increased my schoolboy contempt foi ^ . CHARACTERS. f tell-tales ; it grew with my growth ; it entered into my life ; it caused the bitterest sorrow that I have ever known : it made me what I "am now ; ant what you will all know me, if you follow these confessions to tho end. I believe that I can trace to " Sintram and his Companions, " and especially to that most exquisite t>f creations "Undine," a disposition to dreaminess and-reverie, an excitability of imagination, and a certain degree of superstition, so-catted, which- are components of my character. There was, I have already said, a pleasant brook, which ran through our place and emptied into the Hudson. It passed through the remnant of the forest, of which I have spoken, and formed a wild and beautiful glen there. Just as it entered the wood, it was stopped by a natural dam, and broadened out into quite a large sheet of water, a couple of hundred feet wide perhaps. Then over broken rocks, through a narrow pas sage, it rushed white foaming, down a descent of fifteen or twenty feet, too perpendicular to be called a rapid, not enough so to be named a fall. And so over a rough bed it sparkled on for fifty yards or so when it made another pond, and then once more narrrowing, flowed peacefully along, " singing its song to the quiet woods," and pouring 48 THE BLOODSTONE. its little tribute into the broad and beautiful river. The full was overshadowed by oaks and ma ples, under which grew thickly wild roses, dog wood, sweet brier, and a host of wood flowers. The steep sides of the glen were covered with the same growth, with an occasional hickory tree. In the marshy spots grew the purple fleur-de-lis 4 and ivy, pine-fringes, and wild grapes, festooned the trunks and bougtis of the stately trees. It was to my mood always most beautiful in Autumn, where thS dying foliage put on its hues of glory, and amid the pomp of crimson and gold, shone the rare green of the cedar and hemlock, or hung the dark juicy clusters of the round fox- grape. Or in the sweet Indian summer., that smile which breaking from the rude heart of winter, maketh his rough face lovelier than the Spring s that glen was fairer to me than ever in the many colored autumn. The" heavy air was warm and fragrant; the trees appeared likely to bud anew : the sparse flowers raised their pale heads and drank in the balm of the atmosphere; the un chained brook ran merrily on its way ; the insect awoke from sleep and flitted dreamily through the diaphanous air ; " Merry on balancing branches, Birds were singing their carrol a jubuant hymn to the Highest. a*- CHARACTERS. 49 and the water fell from the mossy rocks, and took weird shapes viewed through the warm mist of the slumberous season. Here I used to sit till twilight fell, and the bro ken moonbeams would play strangely upon the gauze veiled fall ; here I would sit and fancy a fair Undine in the wavering fall and the white foam : and would try to make verses ; and would people the wood with half seen forms : till the bat began to flutter through the haze and the hoot of the owl trembled in the distance ; and the cold night came on to drive th e sap of the sugar maple up from the roots, and to send me home unwil lingly to study or to sleep. Was this my education ? Or am I what T am because of my Heeren s History, my Homer and my Horace? What have I learned from those long lists of rivers, and strings of capital towns, and boundings on the North by this and on the South by that! What weight in my existence hath Hector with his curiously wrought helmet, or Telamonian Ajax had ! What principle did pious ^Eneas plant in me ! Doubtless they all did something for me, but what they did is indis tinguishable now. But that deep love for the Past : that admira tion for chivalric sense of honor, high courage and 50 THE BLOODSTONE. devotion : that dreaminess and love for the super natural : that principle of loyalty and hate of in formers and spies : that desire for the mysterious which IJearned of my own accord, inleisure hours from books which no one gave me for my study. these are what have moulded me ; these created my characteristics ; these wrought the web and woof of my life ; gave birth to, heightened and al leviated my enjoyments and my sorrows. As I draw towards the end of these reminis cences, I grow sad. Fain would T linger in this Holy Land of youth : fain be fanned by itn breezes ; warmed by its sunshine, breathe its sweet atmosphere forever. But the story of my life is before me and I must hasten on to tell it. I have said that Hushby twice saved my life. The first time I w^is in a skiff on the Hudson, which we upset in frolicking. I was the only one who had not yet learned to swim ; and I would inevitably have been drowned, had my dog not seized my collar in his strong teeth and borne me to the shore. The other escape was from a rabid dog. I had heard of him at school and in turning into our long lane met hi .n suddenly. As he came at me, his chest flecked with the foam that mantled on his lips and his red eyes glowing with their fierce fever, I fled up the lane. V " I _ ... I, _. CHARACTERS. 51 Twice in my haste I fell ; but sprang up again and renewed my race for life. But my speed soon slackened and I knew that the brute was gaining on rne. A few bounds more and I felt that my strength was gone : I could hear his hot pantings ; I fancied I could feel his burning breath. Again I stumbled and before I could rise my own brave Hashby had sprung over me and had seized the pursuer by the throat. Long and fiercely they fought, but at length the white tusks of my noble dog tore open the throat of his enemy and he rolled over and died. But Hashby had received four or five severe bites and was condemned to be shut up in an out house. Oh how often have I heard his melan choly howl in the stillness of the night ; how often have I seen his sad reproachful eye looking at me, as I watched him through a grated window and dared not even offer him a caress. At last, the disease declared itself and the poor fellow was ordered to be shot. JWR*. i,-. . When the hour of execution arrived, I shut myself up in my room and held my fingers over my ears lest I should hear the fatal shot. When I thought all was over, I went down stairs, and met Florry all in tears : I did not speak to her but went out on the porch and looked towards . 52 THE BLOODSTONE. the outhouse. There stood old Soc with his gun looking in at the dog. In a moment he came towards me, wiping his eyes with hie hard black hand. " Can t sboot dat dog : dat is a fac," I heard him say. But when he saw me, he seemed to gather new resolution, and returning he hesitated for a while, raising and putting down his gun irresolutely until at last I heard him say, " You got to shoot, ole Soc, you got to shoot," and the next minute I heard a report. Then I too ran to the place and looked in through the bars. The coming of Death saemed to have conquered the madness; and Hashby saw me. His shoulders were both shattered and his breast pierced by the slugs, one of which had torn open his noble head also. But he fixed his fond eyes on mine, and whined lowly and feebly wagged his tail. " Oh, Soc," I cried, bursting into tears, " he is not dead 1" Then the old fellow loaded onc-j more, and put his gun through the bars to my brave dog s head and fired : and so he died, for his love and fidel ity to me. We buried him down by the side of the creek ; and I have seldom seen Mama or Florry look CHARACTERS. 53 more sad, than when the gardener smoothed down the sod" over the grave, and we turned away towards the house. And so the years passed on. I in my turn be came a big boy and learned to patronize the little fellows ; and to get a good deal of service out of them in return for a very little protection. My verses began to assume a more regular form ; a little heart broken withal as verses should be when one has a secret tenderness. I had one which passed among mortals by the name of Lizzy Swan. Lizzy was never unkind to me in the world ; and certainly returned my affection with fairness, if not with usury; yet I, as a poet, wrote the most mournful trash, abusing my Destiny in out rageous language, and trying to persuade myself that my life was already withered. And now Lizzy Swan has grown up daughters and is fat. She married a schoolmate of mine, who used to wear the tightest trousers, and had a round blonde face, and always looked as if about to ooze out of his jacket. 1 can remember his imbe cile grin struggling with his desire to cry, and his moist eyes, when old Smith would apply a stinging cut just where his body was fattest and f . 54 THE BLOODSTONE. his trousers most tight. He was a great booby ; and now lives in a palace, is Assistant Alderman and the spouse of my secret tenderness. Oh, Lizzy Swan ! *, o. \ -^ . V if <> <* ,*. * : # f*i - * >,- .. ^.-^ * A v rpHE pleasure that I derived from de la Motte JL Fouque, induced me to search for what ever translations from the German I could find. These were not numerous, but they were suffi- , ciently so, to produce a powerful effect upon me. I read the Phantasus of Ludvvig Tieck, a volume of Rhenish legends ; bits from Jean Paul Richter : some of the sweet ballads of Uhland, and finally a translation of Wilhelm Meister, which I read and reread but could not understand : which per haps was one cause for my admiration of it. Perhaps also, it is much more common now, 56 THE" BLOODSTONE. than in my day, to admire certain incomprehensi ble German authors ; and X have often thought that their chief charm lay in their incomprehensi bility. When the famous Dr. Parr left his little country parish, he was succeeded by a less learn ed, but devoted and excellent minister. A visitor in the neighborhood, questioned a shock-headed clod-pole, as to the merits of the new parson. " Oh," quoth Giles, " he be nowt loike Doctor Parr." " But is he not a very good preacher ?" "Au aye, beloike he be a goodish preacher, but no Latiner, measter, no Latiner." Oh, ye German philosophers, ye too have countless shock-headed clodpoles among your readers, who love you only because th^y cannot understand you ; and who prefer your misty ap pearances to God s vtruth, w,hen writt en by one who is no Latiner. But to return to myself. My favorite reading produced in me, a wish which soon grew into a yearning to visit Germany, and to enter a Ger man University. I began to write metaphysical poems ; songs in " wine " and " Rhine ; whereof every other verse had the word " weird " in it : the adjectives were, " solemn," " mysterious, " " wild," etc. and upon the whole, the creations LEAVING HOME. 57 were as germanic as most other such things writ ten by young Americans. Then I talked in extraordinary language, made up of compound adjectives and unusual nouns. I spoke of " inception of ideas," of the " eternal I," of the " solemnity of man," and I told Florry that what we knew of the human soul, was that it was individual and mythical, which was the to tality of its possible comprehensibility. And Florry would open her large brown eyes and stare at me in reverent, but ignorant admiration ; but my mother would fix her quiet look on mine, with a quizzical smile upon her lips, until I would get red, and an irrepressible grin would break out from me, half-indignant, and half-sheepish I never could humbug her with my philosophy. She was a remarkable musician, and especially loved the German music, Mendelsohn, Weber, Beethoven, but above all, the master of Masters Mozart. I inherited from her, the acutest sensi bility to music ; I have never known any body so instantly, and so powerfully affected by sounds. The swell of the military trumpet, the deep, har monious rolling of the religious organ, the sing ing of a plaintive melody, like the last Rose of Summer, or the chiming of holy bells could change my mood at will. Favorites of mine, now 58 THE BLOODSTONE. strummed on every piano, were the waltzes of Desire and of Sorrow, von Weber s last waltz, bits from Mozart s requiem, and these being Ger man, only served to increase my desire to visit that harmonious land. At last, I could no longer restrain my yearnings, and I teased my mother until I at last wrung from her a reluctant consent. Then it was decided. As soon as I had accom plished my junior year in old Columbia, which would be just after my nineteenth birth day, I was to leave home. One thing, however, all my entreaties failed to accomplish ; I wanted to go to G-ottengen or Heidelberg, but, my mother was immovable in this. If go I must, it should be to Bonn ; the other two establishments were filled with skeptical Professors, mysticism was the fash ionable form of belief or unbelief, and she knew too well its effect upon the young and half edu cated. So I was obliged to acquiesce, and the shores of old Father Rhine were to be blest by my presence. I had some sort of far off kinsman who dwelt in summer near Andernach ; he had married one of our English cousin^, and to him I v?as to be especially recommended. Letters for Bonn were easily procurable, and an introduction or two in I. K A V 1 N G H O M E. 59 Berlin and Cologne. To crown all, old Soc was to go with us, if he could be brought to give his consent, but he liad shown so violent a disappro bation of my departure, that it was feared that his society, however desirable, would be unattain able. At the proper time however, he wis ordered before the council of three which sat-i in the draw ing room, and when he had made his bow was thus addressed: .J " You know Soc, that Paul is going away next week." " Yes, I know, but I would nt let him ef I was Missus. What good Massa Pol git by goin dar ? Why cant um stay home wid his mudder and his lilly sister and old Soc ?" jfc " It is too late to argue" that topic now, Soc, for his passage is taken. But he wants you to go with him " " Go wid um ! Go way from you Missus, and nobody to take care of you and Miss Florry ? Why !" turning indignantly towards me, " Why Massa Pol, what a onreasonable boy you is !" " Well but Soc," I said, " will you let me go off among strangers all alone in this way ?" " Taint no use talkin Massa Pol ; ole Soc, he * ; 60 THE BLOODSTONE. gittin too ole to travel. Can t leave Missis, -ole Soc can t." " But Soc," said my mother, " we will . have friends here all about us, and we will be at home in our own comfortable house. Here, where everybody knows, and respects us. But Paul will be surrounded by strangers, and if you refuse to go, will not have one single friend to talk to of his home," " What Missus, you want to send ole Soc away ?" said- the poor fellow mournfully. No, my friend, not unless you wish to go. But I thought you loved Paul well enough not to part with him so easy. " The tears gathered in the old fellow s eyes as he said, "I do love little Massa Pol ; ole Soc cut his hand off for Massa Pol, but he love Missus too. Nebber mind. I go." " That s a good fellow," said I. " Then it is settled Soc, is it ? you will go," asked mama. -* ..-.-" $** *" " Yes Missus, I go." " Then," said Florry mischievously, "there will be nobody left to take" care of mB." Soc turned his soft eyes on her, and his heavy lips began to tremble, and his cheek to twitch as he raised his hard black hand to his eyea LEAVING HOME. 61 Then Florry sprang up and took his hand and said, " No, never mind, Soc, I will have mama, but poor Polly will have nobody but you. You shall go with him, and take care of him and bring him safe back to us." And there the faithful old man stood for a mo ment, patting my sister s little white hand in his great dusky paws, and then hurried out of the room, sobbing. So then the four or five days passed on, and the eve of my departure came. Now, as I sit here writing, my memory goes back, "over all those thousands of miles, over the European pop ulous cities, over that wide and indomitable main, where the white sails glance rarely, to the pleasant drawing room in that dear old white house. I hear the measured soughing of the wind through the tossing trees : the bark of the distant watch dog, answered from the hearth rug by a short stifled growl from my Newfoundland ; the high notes of a quaint Irish song, audible by fits, from the kitchen, and the click of Florry s netting-needles, as she finishes the purse which I am to carry, aw ay in the morning. Every thing is packed up and gone since three o clock, down to the vessel, my travelling dress 62 THE BLOODSTONE. is already upon me, my plaid lies over the back of the chair, my letters and passports are in the breast pocket of my coat. My Mother sits in her elbow chair beside her work table, and I, as though I were a boy again, ain on a low stool at her feet, with my head upon her knees. " Paul," she says, " by this time to-morrow night you will, if you have a fan- wind, be out at sea, and your home will be invisible to you. Florry and I will be very sad, my boy, when we sit alone here to-morrow." There is a slight trembling in her voice, and Florry bends down more over her netting, while I put up my hands and take hold of that which is lying on my head, and pull it around my neck and hold it there. " It is a very grand and wonderful world, that old Europe that you are going to, and you will see much to amuse you and instruct you, but amid the stately palaces, the grand old churches, the glorious galleries of art, and the pomp of ad vanced civilization, I know that you will not for get the green woods and hills, and the warm beauty of home, will, you, Paul ? I try >to say " never," but as it does not come very easily I keep silent. " You propose to be absent three or four years * LEAVING HOME. 63 In that time we do not know what our Heavenly Father may determine for us. Young as you and Florry are, you may both die, or what is more likely in the course of nature, I may be called away, and never see your face on earth again." Florry is now crying quietly, and I feel as though I were choking, but the tears do not come yet. " Paul, my dear son, we will hope to meet again even here. But if it may not be so, then in the presence of God hereafter. Paul, whatso ever may be your temptations, whether they come from the enemies of religion, or from your own observation of the faults and short-comings of its ministers and professors, hold fast steadfastly to your Faith. The faith in which you have been nurtured and in which your mother will die. This was given me by your father and has never left my bosom, now Paul, promise that it shall never leave yours. Then besides its own -holier sig nification, it will always keep the memory of your parents fresh in your heart." . She takes a small golden cross from her bo- eom, passes the cord of it about my neck and slips the cross under my cravaf. * " Do you promise, Paul ?" x - t * " " .,-.- * t 64 THE BLOODSTONE. " Yes, mama, on my honor, it shall never be taken by me from where you place it now." " Fortunately," she continues, " I can allow you abundance of money to carry out your de signs. You will probably have more than a ma jority of your fellow students/ But be careful to avoid any ostentation, it is unworthy of you, and as you are a gentleman, is entirely unneces sary to procure you any station that you may de sire. Be generous, but not prodigal ; whatsoever you have above your own needs, you only hold in trust for such as are poorer than yourself. Make as many family acquaintances as you can. Of course at your age, you will naturally be drawn into friendship with young men of your age, but choose carefully. Seek especially, the society of ladies; their refining influence is necessary to all men, and pass as much time as possible in family circles, that home influences may never become unpleasant nor unfamiliar to you. And may God our Father, bless and preserve my darling boy, keep him from every evil, and restore him to his mother and his sister, unstained and improved by his absence !" As my mother speaks the last sentence I slip from my stool upon my knees, and bow my head down on her lap ; and now the tears stream freely. LEAVING HOME. 65 ( . . , "And now, my son, it is bed time, kiss your sister and retire, for you must rise early to-mor row morning." . Then I take Florry in my arms and cover her with kisses, and go to my room. But after mid night, as I lie^ thinking, I hear the door open softly, and my mother comes in with a candle in her hand. She is weeping silently. I know that this visit is too sacred even for me to know of, and I pretend to be asleep. So she sets the can dle down near the door, and comes and kneels down by my bedside, and prays there for ten minutes, and then rises and looks at me for a while steadfastly. Then with fingers soft and gentle, she lifts a lock pf my hair, and cuts it off; and then bows down and drops a light, fond kiss upon my cheek, and blesses me silently, and so goes away. And I lie still, lest any movement should disturb her tears, which I feel are lying on my face. " , A restkss night brightens into dawn, and the grey dawn purples into da,y. I rise and dress myself, commend my soul to the protection of Heaven, and go down stairs. Breakfast is a sad affair, but soon over and a carriage is at the door. Old Soc comes in to say 66 THE BLOODSTONE. good bye. My mother gives him a purse of money and a stout silver watch, and he kisses her hand without speaking. " You will take good care of Paul, won t you, Soc ?" Soc does not reply, but his lips twitch and tremble. Then Florry goes up to him and puts round his neck a great worsted comforter, and says, " I knitted that for you myself, Soc. Good bye." He takes her hand, but she says, " Here, old Soc !" and holds out her sweet fresh cheek to him. Old Soc looks astonished for a moment, then bends and kisses the fair cheek, and blubbers, " Gora mighty bless Miss Florry and Missus," and so goes crying from the room. Then Florry gives me her purse. There is something round and hard in one end of it, and I know that when I shall examine it to-night far, far from home, I shall find a locket with mama s hair and her own in it. Then the last kiss and the last blessing, and the boy goes forth from- his home from his loving mother and sister from his dreamy child- L E A V I N G H O M E . 67 hood, out over the great sea, into the stormy world. There to battle, to enjoy, to suffer, with what patient courage God shall give him. -~ * ...." I - *,* \ -*.: * : VII. THE first days of one s first voyage are seldom devoted either to marine observation-, acqui sition of sailorship, or meditation on the land just forsaken. Most persons, I fancy, spend a day or two, or maybe six, lying on their backs on those w,retched shelves which the captain and steward are pleased to call berths. There is a general suspension of all the mental faculties, the chronic condition of intellect is a calm stupidity. Per. haps if you are in the lower berth, you may won- * > % UEBERSEE.- 69 der whether your superior will fall through upon you soon : if you are in the upper berth, whether ,you are to be pitched out upon the floor, or whe ther the side of the vessel is not just about to give way and precipitate you into the sea. Sometimes a very faint idea of getting up, at some period indefinitely distant, presents itself to you, but disappears again without any active re sult. One day, however, there eomes a calm, and you go up on deck ; and when you see 3 our fel low passengers crawling out after you, you try to walk steadily and to hum a song for the pur pose of creating an impression that you have been actively employed ever since you left port, and am not a man subject to such mortal weaknesses as sea-sickness. Such at least was my case. But the fresh air did me a great deal of good, and even when roughest weather returned, I had no relapse into sea-sickness, thou gh an occasional momentary qualm would come. The second day .of my ap pearance on deck I was leaning over the stern railing, looking down in the swelling wake of the ship, aad yielding to that dreamy sensation that always comes by long gazing into fast running water, when my arm was touched and these words were uttered ** 70 T H E B L 6 O T) 8 T O N fi . " Come away from clar, massa Pol, suppose dat little fence break, den down you go gone drown ed. What ole Soc say to missus den, suppose ?" " Hulloh 1 old Soc 1 where did you come from ?" " Oh, I most done gone, massa Pol, dis ole fel low been wonderful sick. Yes, you may laugh ; you git sick like I was, and you stop laughin , I tell you." But one would have required a much less irritable risibility than I possessed, not to laugh at the figure before me. Soc had on a pair of thick pilot cloth trousers, huge slippers, a flan nel shirt and a blanket. His woolly head and his whole person were covered with down, one or two longish feathers standing up here and there from his cranium. His face had that extraordi nary hue which a sick nigger always displays. The polish was gone, and internal paleness seem ed struggling to get through the opaque skin, and produced an odd grey tint like what is called Ox ford gray. His lips were half open, and his eyes exhibited a most quizzical mixture of fear and dis gust. i "Well, old fellow," said I, "I have been sick also until yesterday, and indeed am not yet quite ! ,. UEBERSEE. 71 well. But how have you got over your sick ness ?" " TOOK doctor s stuff, fnassa Pol , werry good he wos too. Ole. doctor knows werry well what s good for ole Soc when he sick to his stummick." There was a queer twinkle in the old fellow s eye, and I asked him,-r " What did he give you, Soc." " Ole Jamaiky," said Soc, with one of those African explosions of laughter which are so ut terly irresistible. A jolly laugh rose behind us, and a gentleman, plump, good looking and middle-aged, stepped between Soc and me, saying to the former, " So my medicine did you good ?" " Yes, Massa Doctor, good stuff dat. Suppose doctor give Massa Pol a teeny drop, he little sick too. That s Massa Pol." I bowed, upon this introduction arid examined the Doctor. He was short, very portly, and neatly dressed in Shepherd s tartan. An im mense white forehead was framed in short blonde curls ; and his large, clear, blue eyes were full of intelligence. And yet in his jerky motions, as well as in his expression there was very evident oddity. And you could see through the clear azure of his eyes that there was much drollery in- 72 THE BLOODSTONE. side of him. Fun lay at the bottom of them like a pebble at the bottom of a spring. - " This is your servant I suppose, sir?" " Yes, and my good old friend." " He has given me a good deal of information about you, so that I know you already. Have you suffered much from sea-sickness ?" " Yes, and feel a little squeamish even now." " I have a capital anti-naaseate here, try a lit tle." And as he spoke he drew a vial from his pocket, emptied half of it into a small crystal cup and handed it to me. I drank it, and found it as Soc had said to be very old, oily Jamaica rum. And its medicinal virtues were certainly great, **)r it removed my slight nausea at once. " Going to Germany, your servant tells me?" " Yes, to Bonn, to the University." " Hem, good place too, if you go to study ; bad if you go to renown it. I have a nephew whom I shall send there as soon as I get home. My nephew Franz, Franz Von Bergen. You can remember the name if you should meet there." " You are a German then, sir?" " Ah, a complimentary question. It appears I have no Teutonic accent when I speak English. Yes, young sir, I am a German more than that I am a Rhinelander. I live in Andernach." IJEBEROEE. <d " Indeed, do you know a gentleman named Eustace there ?" "Very well, he is my neighbor. Married a Rhine girl for second wife." *", " I have letters for him and for Dr. Hoffnitz." " H m, I know him too." " An excellent, worthy man, I have heard." " Not so good as might be desired, yet not all bad, perhaps. A bit of a humorist, they say in Andernuch. Bo you speak German ?" " Why, a little, as one learns it with us, but my ear is quite uncultivated." 1 1 : " . . . * " You must let me be your tutor then, and our communications for the future shall be in that tongue." The plump physician then questioned me a little about my family and myself ; offered me the books contained in his cabin, and gave me certainly alimentary directions. " Always be regular and careful about your food, especially when studying ; it is only by at tention to that, that a man ever arrives at much eminence. The stomach is the seat of the intel- lect." The doctor then filled and lighted an enormous porcelaine pipe, the whole front of which was em blazoned with a heavily charged coat of arms ; bade uie good morning, went pulliug along the 7 -- - - 74 THE BLOODSTONE. deck and disappeared into the steerage, to visit a patient. Thanks to his kindness on board, I learned to speak well as much German as I had learned from books, quite enough to secure me from an- noyan^e even at the beginning of my sojourn in the land of Herman! Our voyage was rapid and agreeable, and, after a week in London, we cross ed to Rotterdam and so up the Rhine to Cologne, Here the doctor had a niece at school, and he per- " ** * ^ suaded me to spend a day -there and go up the next morning in the steamer with him. I assent ed willingly enough, and passed the most of my time in and about the Minster, and the pipe shops, where I left a sufficient quantity of coin in ex- ^7 - ~"~ ** te- * change for porcelaine and meerchaum bowls with stems of weichsel and jasmin amber-tipped. As I sate the next morning upon the deck of the boat, about the time of starting, I saw my portly friend coming down the wharf, followed by a much over -laden po rter. Upon his arm hung a lady clad in a plain grey travelling dress, which by no means hid the swaying outlines of a beau tiful form. An impenetrable veil hid her face, but as she stepped upon the plank, a little grey- gloved hand lifted the dress just enough to ex hibit a most excellent dainty foot. Then the U E B E R S E E . 75 - * * whistle sounded and the bell clanged, and as the boat moved on I fell into a reverie. It was not however of very long duration. The doctor and his charge soon appeared beside me, and the former saluted me with hearty voice, " Guten morgen, Herr Calvert. Glad to see you so fresh looking this morning. This, young sir, is my niece the Fraulein Marie von Bergen, hochwohlgeborne and so forth. Marie, my dar ling, this is Mr. Galvert, of whom I have told you." Fraulein von Bergen raised her veil, and put out her hand with German frank simplicity. She was very glad to see me, she said, for she was very curious about America, and her uncle always teased her with Miinchausen stories when she questioned him ; but now she would be able to get some correct information from me. And from Cologne to Audernach we talked, I about America, and she of her convent school- life. Of cross sister Ursula, who had a mole up on her nose and never put sugar enough in the coffee ; of the stately Mother, whom all the girls stood so much in awe of; and of sister Angela, who was so slight and beautiful, and who died of consumption and was buried under the big ^^ linden in the early days of Spring. 76 THE BLOODSTONE. She pointed out, also, all the remarkable scenes upon the river, aiid told me their legends ; how Siegfried slew the maid-devouring monster of Drachenfels, and how Roland pined away and died for his lost Hildegonda ; of good Libra of Treuenfels, and her blind father, and how her filial affection was rewarded, and how she still sleeps in the shadow of the Siebengebirge. Then she requested to see my Moor, as she called him, and Soc was brought forward and presented in due form. Finding French and German of no avail, she tried him in fragmentary English, and at the first sound of that he began to talk, and the two had a conversation of five minutes, of which neither probably understood a single phrase spo ken by the other. Ole Soc, however, was en chanted, and pronounced her to be the nicest little young lady he had ever met only missus and Miss Fiorry. During this time I had leisure to observe her. She seemed about seventeen. Her face, a pure oval, with small, clearly cut features. In repose, the slightly brunette skin was transparently pale, but with the least excitement or emotion flushed redly, as the blessed sun s uprising. Soft hair, of a deep chesnut, fell in heavy curls from under her bonnet; and her large eyes, black in the sha 1 " V ._,- UEBERSEE. 77 and golden brown in the sun, varied every mo ment in expression and shade. Her form, not yet developed, was guiltless of angles, every outline was curved, and consequently every motion was graceful ; and her bands were perfection. She had none of the reserve and artificiality taught by society, and indeed not one German girl in a hundred, out of Vienna or Berlin, has it. But an inborn refinement, an unmistakeable lady- ism, was evidently hers ; she always did right by instinct. Before many hours my opinion of her was in consonance with .that of old Soc. " Do you see that tall old tower there, Herr Calvert ?" " Yes ; what a superb one it is ; what is it ? "It is the Koman tower of Audernach, and to night you will sleep beneath its protection." " But you call it Roman; surely those pointed gables and crosses, and lancet windows are not Roman." " No ; but look at the masonry below. It is the Latin soldier capped with a mitre of the mid dle ages. The Roman was succeeded by a prince-bishop here. And there, see, are the towers of a cathedral nearly eleven hundred years of age, and there, in a word, are all sorts 78 THE BLOODSTONE. of things which you will soon learn more about than I can tell you." Most of the time the doctor had been near us, reading or walking up and down the deck, medi tatively smoking or throwing in an occasional re mark. When we landed, he kindly saw to my baggage, and he and his niece walked with me to the Lilian Hof, the Lily Hotel, where their car riage was waiting. " Good bye," he said at parting, "you will hear from rne in a day or two." "Adieu Herr Calvert," said the lady, "you must come and see us soon, and learn to know my brother Franz. Good-a-bai meester Soc rates." And so they were gone. Having seen my rooms and despatched a note to Mr. Eustace, who resided out of town, I took advantage of the moonlight to wander about the quaint old city. I looked at the fortifications, at the northern gate, surmounted by the antique episcopal arms at the western gate, over which odd Saracenic heads frown grimly ; the Roman tombs upon the Kirchberg, the aged grey Nor man cathedral, the fifteenth century gothic church of St. Genevieve; the walls built by the troops of bold Germanicus, but copestoned centuries af ter by the priestly rulers of the town ; the swift UEBERSEE-. 79 rushing of the turbid Ehine ; the hills covered with vineyards, which formed the background of the cily. The tall, high gabled houses, unlike Tr * some ladies, wore the date of their birth in iron ciphers on their fronts. Music sounded from the public gardens; the drum of the Prussian bar rack called home the wandering soldier ; the church bell sounded curfew, the hour of evening prayer; and I went home to bed and dreamed that I was a centurion in the army of Germanicus aiding the old doctor, who had become a thir teenth century bishop, to resist the aggression of Arminius. In the army of the latter methought there was a troop of Barbary Saracens com manded by old Soc. And finally I. was intro duced by Julius Csesar to Marie von Bergen, and in a violent attempt to comprehend her Latin de scription of a vineyard, I awoke to see the glad sun smiling at my casement and to hear the voice of the storied Khine. - - . .- , . , - *J Jp?* ^ . - *. * ".-, . . * - v^- . jv ; . s .";/ ; > - s \ V^ > : : "^ ; ;:;..,;, ;,:. ;;:;;. *.; , *>* " VIII. J^to g tginnings . . j# : i- ^ ..* IN the wild land of the Grisons, where mel.in- choly Sails sang, stand the two mighty Alps, Muschel-horn and Mittag-horn. the Mount of Shells and the Peak of the Noonday. They have but one heart, these brother mountains, and it beats with pulsations mighty as the sea s ; but silently, for the sea is frozen. Yet when the sun of the Noonday showers his burning kisses there, the ice-heart melts and weeps, and its tears are called the RHINE. .; ^ " * - * * .* *~- !.*>.. N E r BEGINNINGS. 81 Slowly it steals from beneath the shadow of its parent hills, and runs through Alpine-land twist ing amid the snow-crowned heights to sweet lake Constance, and mingles with the calm blue waters of that renowned sheet. . Then on, o er pebbly bed, o er rocky pass, beneath the shades of old pine forests, by sunny vineyards and broad pas ture lauds, to the wild leap at Schaffhausen, where vexed and torn, it foams till its waves wax white with wrath, and bounds over the jag ged descent, and so grows calm ; and the many- colored rainbow mingles with the mist, and rests above it, a perpetual benediction, and Father Rhine broadens and flows on. Past the black forest to the quaint city of Bale, where the storks build upon the churches, ancN St. George kills the dragon, on the Cathedral portals, and loungers crowd the parapets of the bridge looking down into the swift waters. Past the shadow of that mighty temple of Strasbourg, renowned in history and sung to the quaint chords of Longfellow s lute in the Golden Legend. There are painted Panes, that flame like gold and crimson . And the apostles And the Martyrs wrapped in mantle* Stand as warders at the entrance, Stand as sentinels o er head. 82 THE BLOODSTONE. On goes the exulting and abounding river, to old Mayence, and then by ruin covered heights and vales that laugh with corn, and hills that teem with wine, past haughty Stolzenfels to Cob- lenz, sleeping in the shadow of Ehrenbreitstein the Broad Stone of honor. On through ten thousand legends to quaint Andernach, Whose ancient walls are caressed by the -waters. Idol of every German heart : theme of every German harp : ch.iid of the glacier and father of the land of Herman, rolls the proud river on, on, on to the awful sea, and falls into the boson, of that mighty mother, and rests from its labors. My first thought after breakfast, was to write letters to my mother and sister, which occupied the whole morning until dinner time, that impor tant meal occurring at half past two. It may be fancied that my first German dinner made an impression upon me. The table d hote half filled, the side tables covered with dishes, hats, cloaks, swords, canes and umbrellas, the pretty girls in waiting, and the fat calm of the inexpressive land lord, throned in state at the end of the board, " NEW BEGINNINGS. 83 had an odd look as I entered. Before the soup came, I had an opportunity to examine my con vives, r " * j 9 There were two fat majors, and threa fat lieu tenants, all of them decorated. There was a pen sioned Colonel grizzly and obese, from whose sol emn button hole swung seven different- orders, and from- whose naturally grim visage, a sabre cut beginning on the left temple, and going through the upper lip, had taken no iota of grim- ness. There -were two or three plump good na- tured looking ladies, and a little withered fig of an official whose name contained but one syllable and whose title rejoiced in thirteen It was the Herr Koniglicher - hoch - ober - steuer - Inspektor Heip. He was about four feet two inches tall, two inches and a half being boot heel, but his self importance was immeasurable. The ladies conversed, but the men preserved a solemn silence. A few munched their bread ; one bored little holes in the table cloth with his fork, irately observed by the black-eyed dienst mad- chen. All were elaborately napkined ; and when the door opened on the kitchen side of the hall, and the odor of soup arose, each grasped his spoon, a faint smile passed round the table and as the pottage was placed before them, they emit- 84 THE BLOODSTONE. ted a low grunt of contentment, and fell manfully to work. Every one who came in, wished the feeders " guteu appetit," and they grumbled low respon- ces to their spoons. It was a surprise to me that the roast beef which followed the soup should be Bour, and I was about to put my share away, when I observed marks of a general satisfaction on the part of the guests, and remembered that some one had said " In German cookery all ia vinegar that is not grease, all greasy that is not sour." I was not prepared to see fish follow the roast : neither did I expect the pastry and mar malades which succeeded the fish, nor the huge joints of roasted pork and veal that came after the pastry, nor the chickens that chased the roast away to make room in turn for a course of cray fish and tooth-picks. The worthy Teutons ate of all the plates, and sighed as the last disap peared. Before the dinner was half over I heard an occasional remark, and by the time we got to the crayfish there was a general buzz of slow con versation along which rumbled occasionally some chuckle-born ponderous pleasantry. It appeared as though the voices had been shut up in the meats and had to be chewed out before they could NEW BEGINNINGS. 85 become audible ; or as if, according to my friend the doctors idea, the intellect was situated in the stomach, where its business was to fill the vacuum until driven upward for the edification of man kind, by the masses of food that descended to dis lodge it. More rambling about the quaint, twisted streets ; and a chat with old Soc prepared me for a sound and refreshing sleep and a good ap petite for my breakfast. That initiatory meal having been discussed, i resolved to attack my longest and largest pipe. I filled it with the gravity becoming a German student, and finding my arm too snort to reach the bowl, I directed Soc to light it, which action he performed in a etate of great amazement. I feel myself author ized to declare that the first whiff had the most undisguisedly nasty taste known to my gustative organs : puff the second made my mouth water profusely ; puff the third brought tears to my eyes ; my head swam round at puff the fourth ; and chancing to swallow the moiety of number five, I put my pipe away in a corner and lay down on my back upon the sofa. It was months before I learned to smoke as a Bursch is bound to do. .Half an hour afterward, as I sat meditating at my window, looking out into the paved square in < 8 -* * ,** 86 THE BLOODSTONE. front of the Hotel, I saw a stout German girl issue from a side street and begin to cross the square. Upon one arm she held a fat baby, on the other ^a large, oval, heavy-looking bundle. As she reached the middle of the square the bundle slipped, and when by a sudden clutch she caught it back to its original position, the motion dislodged the baby and he began to .slide towards the ground. Instinctively the girl pressed her arm towards her body arid the baby was arrested by the neck. Theri the hand was cautiously moved downward and a quick catch renewed possession of the baby, and, at the expense of showing a considerable quantity of blue worsted ankle of more than ordinary dimensions, she man- aged to hoist him to his original position. But he was not quite fairly seated when the bundle slipped again; and in recovering the bundle, down went the baby, till the poor girl finally saw both deposited at her feet upon the stones, and after an imbecile gaze of a minute or so, she put her hands in her pockets and lifted up her voice and wept. Then 1 saw old Soc approach her, and she stared at him with undisguised horror, being probably the first black man she had ever seen. As he drew nearer, his intention of lifting the NEW BEGINNINGS. 87 baby became evident ; arid she with a scream darted forward, thrust a letter into his hand, and possessing herself of her loads in some mysterious manner scuttled over the flagging, turned a cor ner and was seen no more. Old Soc was in a state of extreme indignation. " Huh !" I heard him say, " guess de gal think ole Soc debbil." Then, scratching his head and gazing hopelessly on the letter, he approached the house. In a few minutes he came into my room, saying that the fat landlord declared the epistle to be mine ; though Soc said the writing looked more like a " cat track dan Massa Pol a name." But it was for me. Zum Herrn, Herr Paulus von Calver,, Hachwohlgeborne Zum Lilienhof Andernach. The " high- well born Paulus" opened the epis tle and found it to contain the information that Mr. Eustace and lady had gone to Vienna and would not return for three weeks : that the writer Claudius Hoffnitz would send a carriage for the " high well-born Paulus" on the morrow ; and that the said Paulus would make the doctor s house his home until the return of Mr. Eustace. 88 THE BLOODSTONE. The letter concluded with the assertion that Claudius Hoffuitz was "of my high-well-born honor, the most well-wishing and obedient ser vant." On the next day the promised vehicle appeared and carried me to the home of Dr. Hoffnitz, whom, to my surprise and gratification, I discov ered to be my fellow traveller and the uncle of Marie von Bergen How it happened that I had never learned his name I do not know, I suppose from the fact that he had introduced himself to me as the uncle of Franz von Bergen, and my having taken it for granted that he bore the same name. His house was some two miles from Ander- nach, up the river, at the foot of a hill green with vines. Looking from its broad piazza you saw the low hills of Fahr, crowned in the dis tance by Mont-repos the summer palace of the Prince of Wied. Just across the river lay the small town of Newwied, its tall spires and the rich foliage of the Castle Park shining in the sun. Far back of that rose the forest crowned highlands, and the stern old Ruin of Braunsberg, huge as a Coliseum, frowned gloomily above. Further up still, Weisenthurm nestled amid vines : the heights of Princely Sayn were visible, NEW BEGINNINGS. 89 and the light glinted on the lofty battlements of impregnable Ehrenbreitstein. The house was large and admirably divided. Of stiff, single chairs there were none : but comfortable arm chairs and fat cozy sofas gave promise that sitting should be less difficult than standing. The inlaid, oaken floors were spotless and polished, but as in most German houses, there were no carpets. But vases, filled with drooping vines swung from the cieliivgs in the windows ; and just a sufficient number of bronzes and good pictures hung upon the walls or stood on brackets and in niches. This then was my home for three weeks ; for it does not require time to feel at home with a German family. "Warm-hearted, frank and sim ple, they speak their welcome in a way that re- quires no after assurances, and in a week they seem to you as old life-long friends. My time was passed in visiting the environs. Now to ru ined Braunsberg : again to the magnificent palace of the Prince of Sayn : down the Rhine to Royul Eeineck ; up t haughty Stolzenfells : sometimes to drink coffee in the gardens of Ntte-haus . sometimes to gloomy lake Laacher, whose icy waters sleep, restlessly, in the crater of an extinct volcaoo, and from whose eastern shore well up 90 THEBLOODSTONE. mephitic streams like those of the Grotto del Cane. Now in all these wanderings or nearly all Franz and Marie and the good old doctor were with me. And the brown eyed Rhine girl wove the strings of my heart around her, and 1 wrote worse verses and dreamed worse dreams than even in my idle youth at home. Then Mr. Eustace returned .and I went to re side at his house which was henceforth to be my home during the vacations. It was but a few hundred yards from the doctor s, and so I still saw Marie every day. Then the time for. going to the University arri ved, and Franz and I went down and matriculated at Bonn. ., ].. _ " ^ ^| V . * *-*"^fc . . J^^"~. -* *- 4|f .? i , --i^ 1 . *V *"^v - -p-*~l .. .* <* ; -. >. c " v--y.r tr - v - IX. -- .V--.- .,jj,- g I00H10ne. I WILL not attempt to describe my life ac tne University, for American and English readers have both been rendered tolerably familiar with the manners and habits of the German Stu dents ; and nothing out of the common course of adven ture fell to my share. I had a collection of meerchaum and porcelain pipes and smoked therein Varinas and Knaster ; I had Schlagers and learned to use them ; I had beer mugs of "Bohemian glass, of tinted clay, of 92 THE BLOODSTONE. South American ox-horu ; and tall, old variously colored wine-glasses for Liebfraumilch, or As- manshausen or Rudesherner or Braunerberger as the case might be. I wore a small embroid ered cap, and a velvet-coat embossed with abun dant braid and fair white gauntlets of rein-deer skin. I knew the songs and chorusses most in fashion, could play a little on half-a-dozen instruments ; sketch well enough to give an idea of a Rhineland ruin : study sufficiently to keep a respectable po sition in the esteem of the Professors. I hated and annoyed Philistines. I was always ready to play my part in a commers, to bow saucily to a pretty girl, to join in the peasants dances in a vord, -I was a Bursch. No German student could exist without a schatz or sweetheart, and a briulerfreund a brother friend, with whom you swear fraternity amid the clang of glasses and seal the vow with a kiss upon the lips. The former of these essentials I had found in Marie von Bergen, and the latter in her brother Franz. It was not altogether because Franz was her brother that I loved him and formed with him the almost passionate friendship which united us ; for he was, truly, the most loveable man I fc , THEBLOODSTONE. 93 have ever known. Generous, devoted, impas sioned and yet not quick-tempered, the only in stance of this that I have seen. Eminently hand some in the same style as his sister, with heavy brown silken curls falling down upon his shoul ders : dressed fancifully and with a full share of the graceful and innocent, dandyism of the stu dent : his large, loving, eyes and his gentle smile , ^^^^ would have won almost any heart. His chief characteristic was gentleness, almost feminine although in no degree effeminate ; for the moment that a principle came in question, he grew firm as the sternest. I think that he repaid all my love for him with interest and we shared every thought in common, save one. I had told him that I loved Marie and he had answered with rare wisdom that while he desired nothing so much as to see his sister return my affection, yet that a brother was the last man to choose for a confidant. " If I were your confidant Paul," he would , say, " I should be obliged to hear everything. But every affection has its clouds ; there are mis understandings, lovers quarrels, mistakes, revul sions of feelings, sentiments altered by altering circumstances in which I, Marie s brother and your friend, wdfcld not know which side to j > " V 94 THE BLOODSTONE. choose. No ; dear-friend ; bare your heart to no one but herself; the heart of a husband is a shrine consecrated unto God, and none should be its minister save the wife." Guided by this philosophy, our friendship in creased from day to day, andwe became insepar able at the University gr at Andernach when va cation gave us leisure for a visit there. Of course, we had other intimate acquaintances, friends in the common, and not unprofane, use of the word, who formed our ordinary associates. Among them, I would record Casper Hefferman. He was a young giant ; at least six feet, two inches in height, with broad shoulders and vast, deep chest. A magnificent black beard covered the lower part of his face, and he had the waving air and broad snow-white forehead of the enthu siast. His voice was of singular melody, deep, rich and sonorous as the tones of an organ ; and his dark, expressive eyes illuminated his whole countenance. In athletic exercises, he had no rival ; in elo quence of speech no imitator. I have never known a man who could so move the minds of his hearers by oratory. His gestures were slow and dignified, a favorite one being the simultan eous lifting of the massive arnfs ; and when en- THEBLOODSTONE. 95 tranced by the glorious music of his voice, you saw those strong arms rising slowly, it seemed as if the weight of mountains could not have kept them down. His Demosthenic power of denuci- ation was united with a strength of scorn that would have become a demon his sarcasm was blighting. His great lack was reverence. The man had none. Whatever was above him, served as target for his arrows. Yet his generous, youth ful fire hid the ugliness of this, and the might of his earnestness induced imitation, even against conviction. What his eloquence did for us, is important in this life-story of mine. At the period of which I write, all Germany was convulsed : the seeds were being sown, which afterwards ripened and were reaped in 1848. Se cret societies were every where formed. Some for the union of Germany under the Austrian Emperor, or under an elective Head, or under the King of Prussia, for each had a powerful party. Some for a grand Teutonic Eepublic. Some for an universal democracy which should unite all mankind in equal brotherhood. In the Universities a sort of mania for these things existed. A man was nothing if not an adept in one of these mysteries. On every coat 96 THE BLOODSTONE. was a quaint badge ; students had mystic signs of recognition. You would see fellows from Heidel berg or Gottiugen or Jena, appear as strangers in our own streets. They would meet a party of our men, and raise their hand or fingers in some particular way ; and then some one of our party would dart forward and fling his right arm round the stranger s neck, and kiss him on both cheeks : then go through the same manoeuvre with the left arm, finally subsiding into tranquility and under going the like accolade in turn from the stranger. Every University had its mother societies whereof numberless affiliations covered the land. Franz and I had been induced to join one of these secret orders, more because it was the fash ion than from any very clearly definite motive, for the object we did not know. Enough that we wore over the heart, a small Maltese cross of bloodstone, and were mysteriously known as the Nameless : we had our peculiar recognition sign, and our chief business was to go to some neigh boring town on a frolic, or to listen to the speak ing of Casper Heffernan and others. "We had brethreri at Gottingen, Jena, Heidelberg, Vienna, Freiburg, etc. and the Presidency sat alternately at each of the first three towns and at Bonn. There were, we knew, solemn conclaves of the su- r *.< . THE BLOODSTONE. 97 perior members called from time t6 time, but for what purpose we bt rtojaot neither knew nor cared For us, there was just mystery enough, badge enough, and pleasant reunion enough, to add a nfew pleasure to our store ; so Franz and I were members of the Nameless, and we wore the Blood stone beneath our vests. And so the time passed on. Bead by bead, I told the chaplet of niy years, and each one brought me nearer to m\ <,ross. ..-; " " *. 4 **" * y^ ^ -^Hii!- * x. LET me catch up the thread of my story. I was a great pedestrian in those days ; and my love for wild scenery, my love for antique ruin, weird legend, and the myths of poetry, found abundant exercise. Knights and dragons, wood fays and river-sprites, Rubezahl and Lare- lie still dwell on the shores of the Rhine. If you cannot see them, it is because you have no faith. But I have seen them all in my wanderings there. I have tramped along the dusty road, side MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 99 by side with some Koman eagle-bearer, and have seen the sullen face of the long-haired German, peer out upon us from the covert of the forest. I have seen the fierce rats swimming over the swift current to devour the cruel Bishop Hatto ; I have heard the song of the syren from her whirlpool at St. Goar. Rubezahl has played me many a trick in the dim light of mountain forests; veiled ladies and mailed warriors, with bright eyed Miunesan- gers have passed me in beautiful procession, and I have gone to visit the ruins that others leave to crumble and I have builded them lovingly up again arched the high roof and glazed with tinted panes the lancet windows., . Then I set sentinels upon the battlements, and placed the cavaliers and dames upon the sward beneath the shade of vines, circled round Walther von der Vogelweide as he sang his Frauenlob, his song in praise of Women, or in the hall, to sheen of glittering lights, they walked the stately minuet. In a w r ord, I put back the world clock some four centuries, and bade it linger while I dreamed. It is a very curious fact, and worth recording here, that in every cluster of those olden dames, gome one resembled Marie. My favorite resort, either in carriages if there 100 THE BLOODSTONE. were ladies of the party, or on foot with Franz, and sometimes students of our set, and sometimes quite alone, was an ancient fortification near Braunsberg. You walk up the river from Ander- nach to Nette Haus, where you cross in the ferry 2>oat, swung over by the force of the current, to Neuwied, beloved of the Moravian brethren. From this town you strike off westward to Hed- desdorf, where the riflemen practice, and some times kill old women reaping the ripe grain ; then northward up the ascending roads through the wild hilU and gloomy tannen forests to the Hei- dengraben, or Pagan s grave a long, deep, dark, ravine, tangled with thorny vines and stunted ce dars, and rank baleful vegetation ; its dim invisi ble abyss, resonant with the voice of torrents. This ravine ends in an oval valley of exceeding loveliness, where bright streams cross each other, and over which the sunlit pines upon the pleasant knolls nod greeting to each other. Upon the highest of these knolls, backed by thick ever green foliage, and commanding the whole sur rounding country for at least half a mile, except on the precipitous northern side, stands a gigantic circular ruin, five hundred feet in circumference. The masonry is Eoman square stones and firm, imperishable cement; but there are the ruins of Ml S UNDERSTANDINGS. 101 middle age battlements upon the massive walls. Though vines of ivy and the poisonous mercury arid delicate qninquefoli a have tapestried the in ner walls, and the court is- grass-grown, arid tall weeds shoot up through .the pavement stones, you still see the traces of human habitation. Huge stones and bits of masonry are arranged in the form of seats about a higher presidential chair. The traces of fire are visible at one end, and as you sttr the earth you pick up flints of ancient pistols, and cross-bow bolts of iron rusted. Entire arquebusses, honeycombed with age, and leathern purses with coins of a century and a half ago, have been found here. It is very solemn to be here alone, when the day is lowering and the birds cower in the forest afraid to sing; and you see nothing but the grim walls and the dark foliage around you and the clouds above and the raven flaps his heavy wings sluggishly above you, and the eagle screams to its mate upon the beetling cliffs behind. I had a strange attraction to this weird place; and yet I experienced no pleasure in it. On the contrary, I always felt a vague weight upon rny spirits such, [ supposed, as the second -sigh ted Seer, the Taishtear, feels, before his vision of death begins to open upon him. What Castle 102 THE BLOODSTONE., Bramsberg for so men catt it now was to do for me, he who reads . this history will soon earn. I had been nearly three years in Germany. Another course of four months and I would quit the University. I have not told nor will I tell the story of my love making. Not that it s unimportant for what is human life without human love ! bat because the lesson which this book is intended to teach, should be told with simpleness, and not made to linger towards its catastrophe, like a drama whose end is only to amuse and to interest by its adventurous on going. I have said that I soon learned to love Marie von Bergen, and that love only increased as I knew more of her. Without any heroic qualities, except that heroism of patience which no true woman is without, she possessed the usual excel lences of her- sex gentleness, affectionateness, devotedness, admiration of noble deeds and lofty aspirations, refined tastes and appreciations, ear nest religious feeling, and faithfully pious prac tice. She .was by no means angelic, but very far from it. Her lips could curl with pride or scorn her eyes could flash or fill with passionate tears her pretty lips could utter sentences of very suf ficient bitterness or sarcasm. She had the pro- Ml8UNDRSTAN DINGS. 103 foundest contempt for logic when it clashed with an affection ; and in ber proudest march of argu ment, you had but to throw one tender feeling in the way, and she was sure to tumble over it, and to rise with all her impressions favorable to the other side. Her accomplishments were the usual ones of a lady, .except music, in which she was more than an ordinary proficient. "What she had of beautiful above all other wo men I have ever known, was her intense domes ticity. She was best seen at home ; and let her be at all prominent in any situation, and she cre ated a home atmosphere at once around her. This homeness pardon the word was her pre eminent characteristic, and with its power to awaken what is purest and to repress what is worldly and base in man, it sanctified her I say it in a reverent figure it set her apart from com mon things, and surrounded her brow as with a halo. I had never yet told her, in words, that I loved her neither had I made any attempt to conceal it, and I had every reason to imagine myself at least preferred. Matters were in this position when Franz and I went back to Bonn, I to conclude my studies there, and he to commence his in.Jurisorudence. 104 THE BLOODSTONE. It was during the winter months of 18 , and the University town was very gay. Strangers from Vienna, Berlin, Dresden and even Paris, had been drawn there, aad we had a merry time of it, our studies being merely revisatory and not requiring a great deal of labor. Among the^many whom we met in society was a French lady, a Madame Verneuil, who was of especial mark among us. A widow, she was free, and confessing to thirty, she was a fine woman. She was very beautiful after the Juno style, pos sessing a grand, imposing figure, magnificent in its rounded and swaying contours, dark hair of abundant richness, and grand, well educated eyes. "Winning as she was physically, she was old enough not to rely solely upon her beauty, but she dis played all the charm of polished life, the ease which a habit of cultivated society gives, the happiest manner of exhibiting all her knowledge which was varied and graceful, and that limit less, shallow good nature peculiar to the Paris- ienne. She declared herself possessed by a fureur for students ; took an apparently deep interest in all that related to them, was. constantly surrounded by a circle of young men, and received weekly more bouquets than would have furnished a hot- MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 105 * ( -j*- house and .more verses than would be required to paper the walls of St. Peter s. She did me the great honor of selecting me as favorite attendant. I was flattered by her pre ference, as what young man would not be, and her fascinations won iny admiration and secured my attentions without touching my heart I thought of her as I think now of Hawthorne s Zenobia, pleased with her beauty and attracted by her in tellect, but without the alightest desire to belong to her or to call her mine. Hovvbeit, I was much with her, at the concert, in the carriage ; she took my arm for the prome nade, made room for me beside her at the even ing parties, and looked for my hand to help her out of boat or coach. To me she was a Venus or Cleopatra, from the pencil of Titian if you like, to be looked at in galleries from a distance, but the sweet Madonna shrined within me left no room in the heart for her., At least she secured what ever services she desired of me, my time, my harp, and my compliments were always at her disposal, and she paid me by the pleasure I felt in her so ciety. Nay, more, as I happened to gain a prize for some verses at my final examination, she crown ed me solemnly with laurels in her elegant draw- * IP . . "^ g^ . 106 THE BLOODSTONE. ing rooms and for the rest xxf the evening we were Torquato and Leonora. But no sooner, were the ofays of student life ended and my diplotipa received and packed up in its tin case out of sight, lite a favorable criticism in an obscure review, than I started for quiet old Andernach. Not without, its reveries was this period-. That period ^of student life was another shore left forever ; my boat had been in pleasant" seas; rocked by no dangerous gales, and now the moorings were cast off and 1 was drifting out upon a wide and unknown ocean, not starless, but yet wide and all un4mow.n. Good heaven! those deeds that seemed so unimportant in my careless student existence, might they not one day frowu upon me. Alas, one deed is often the first grain deposited by the invisible coral worm, the nucleus of a merciless reef whereon many a good ship shall perish. I reached home just as supper was prepared, and the steam of the coffee, dear to the German girls, was fragrant in the hall. I found Mr. and Mrs. Eustace entertaining a tall, good looking, young Bavarian soldier, to whom I was present ed. 1 was a little crossed by this as I had pro posed to sHp quietly out after tea, and run over to tell Dr. Hofftiitx the University news. But ". MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 107 there was no help for it, I must stay and talk with llerr Lieutenant Am Rhyn. ^ ^^** When the evening was over and he rose to take leave, I asked if he vvas going to Andernach. " Oh no," -he said, " only next door, I am stay ing with old Hoffnitz." I took another look at the warrior and observ ed that his shoulders were round and his face too full. and healthful looking for my notion of beauty. ; Oh,, you are staying at the doctor s ?" " Yes, capital, good old fellow he is too. And Mnrie, dear little soul, is she not, such eyes and lips !" " Shall I pitch into this fellow ?" said I. to my self, and after a struggle myself said "^N"o." " (Jute nacht, meiu lieber" said the Bavarian, " Good night my dear fellow, corne over and see me." And his long legs got in motion and took him away. " Come and see him ! go there to see him ! who the deuce is he, that I should go to see him. The impudent, beer drinking Bavarian ruffian." The frame of mind in which I mounted to my room was positively un-christian and superlatively anti -Bavarian. But a moment s reflection sug gested. " Pooh, pooh, you are making a fuss . .- 108 T H E B L O O D S T O N E . about nothing, some cousin or something of the doctor s ; rather a super cousinly admiration for Marie he appears to have, however; calls her little Marie and talks of her eyes anf tips, the confounded camel. -Never mind, we shall see" in the morning." So I went to sleep. The next morning s cool meditation informed me that I was quite old enough to take matters calmly, and that I should treat the whole affair with dignity. Marie was not to be even thought of by a man out of temper, and if it should be come necessary to slay the Bavarian, that could be done with a calm politeness. So I resolved to go down stairs and inform Mr. Eustace of my determination to demand the hand of the gnadiges Fraulein von Bergen. Much to my surprise, he was not at all surpris ed ; his wife, he said, had kept him quite au cou- rant of my affections, and furthermore he not only approved of early marriages, but thought Marie the person in the world and the most like ly to make me a good wife. I knew that my mother would be satisfied, for I had written to her constantly of Marie, and she had given me more than one letter of advice, delegating in the last one, her parental authority to Mr. Eustace and the Doctor. MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 109 Now all this pleased me* very much, and I ex pected no difficulties on the part of the worthy physician, who made no secret of his liking me. Like all dreamers who have the habit of writing down their dreams, I had no affection for the ro- nurotic in real life. I liked the course of true love to run along in one smooth, unbroken cur rent, Mr. Shakspere to the contrary notwith standing. So, after breakfast, full of coffee, rolls and hope, I set out for my interview with the un cle of my beloved one. ". I found him in his study, writing, and wished him " good morning." " Ah, good morning Paul," he said without looking up. This conduct appeared to me at va riance with the importance of my visit, and I re- JB ^ -.^ marked with dignity " I wish to speak to you, Dr. Hoffnitz, when you have leisure." He turned round, laid down his pen and point ed to a seat with so much good nature, as not only to upset my dignity but my courage along with it, and a sufficiently long silence ensued. " Well," said the doctor. " Doctor, I I have just come from Bonn ." " I know it," he answered, opening his eyes, "I saw you there on the day before yesterday." 110 THE BLOOD s j ONE. This was a poor beginning, and I fidgetted and waxed red and brushed my Uair back, and pulled my gloves off. " Are you not well," he inquired, (t you look feverish, face flushed, motions nervous, slight wildness in the eye, put out your tongue." " Dr. Hoffnitz, I am perfectly well, I have no - I, am in love, sir !" The fun gleamed up through the liquid blue of his eyes. " Oh, is that all ? I began to fear that you had the jnfluenza; Frau Pumpernickle s little ones are -snuffling suffering I should say terribly with it. " " Don t quiz, doctor, .for I am very serious. My happiness depends upon it." " Oh, of course it does, that is always the case in affairs of this sort. But don t be in such a hurry, you are just out of the University. Go travel and see the world for a couple of years, arid then repose yourself for a couple more, think over some profession, and then fall in Jove." " But sir, I am now twenty two years old, and she is nineteen." , *. "A very patriarchal age, I admit." " But everybody gets married at that age sir MISUNDERSTANDINGS. Ill "I didn t. Time enough, Paul. Take my ad vice and travel; and I will give you a mild opiate to take to-night on going to bed. " No sir ; it is impossible ; I have loved her since I .first saw her, and were I to lose her my heart would break." " Heart ! humbug ! What has the heart to do with it? the stomach is the seat of the affections. Np man can get on with a disordered stomach. Look at our Germans. You won t deny that they understand love making better than any other people, and they eat well, drink well, and smoke digestive pipes. Look at our aesthetic teas" where all matters of sentiment are settled. No German girl, even in paroxysms of tender ness, ever forgot her coffee at eleven o clock. And then there s the case of Charlotte and Wer- ther, (second of Gothe, two ninety seven,) as long as they spread and ate bread and butter they got along famously ; when they quit that, .their sto machs became disordered and ..they committed suicide. Had I been their physician, they would have done nothing of the kind. One grain of quinine taken every morning, fasting, would have rectified all that, A lover never whines until he loses his appetite. Keep the stomach right and 112 THE BLOODSTONE. the heart wont break, be sure. There, what have you got to say against that ?" "Nothing, only that I love Marie too dear- " Love whom ?" " Marie." " What ! my Marie ? Marie von Bergen ?" "Yes sir." " Whew ! Noto the wheel is in the mire. What a chuckle-headed old fool, what a dummkopf I am ! Here, for three years, have I left you and her constantly together as though you had been but five years old. Why, Paul, rny dear boy, I intended her for A Rhyn," " What," I exclaimed explosively, " give Maria to that stupid long-legged " " His legs are long," admitted the doctor. "A great Bavarian beer-swilling preposterous giraffe !" " Stop, Paul, you are confusing metaphors. There are no giraffes in Bavaria ; neither is it the custom of that tall quadruped to quench his thirst with malt liquors." I could not help laughing, and the doctor con tinued " Do not be so unnecessarily violent. There is MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 113 no promise, and besides, 1 like you better than him. But your mother !" " She has known Marie for a long time, as well as letter could describe her ; and only re quires of me that I do nothing without your con sent and advice, as well as that of M_r. Eustace." " Well, I don t know I if I thought ach, du guter Himmel, I know nothing of these things. I will let Marie decide for herself." I had seen Marie in the conservatory, and at her side was the Bavarian giraffe. So when the Doctor agreed to leave all te her, I left the stu dy and went out. When I opened the door lead ing to the g;irden, the twain were examining a magnificent flower covered rose-bush ; 1 saw her pick one and give it to the giraffe, which kissed it and put it into its bosom, confound it. Then she turned, and as she saw me, her face became crimson, and then pale. She said something to the giraffe, and walked rapidly towards me. I, hat in hand, stepped down within the hot house, and smiled a greeting. Sh fixed her brown eyes full upon mine, as -she came near me, and without bending her head, said with great dis tinction " Good morning Herr Oalvert," and so passed 114 P H E BLOODSTONE. by me into the house. The giraffe nodded to me condescendingly, and gave Marie his hand to mount the steps. Moi, je fus plante la. . .. ," .%* ."- . ! - :- - ,* XI. IT took me some time to recover from the shock of Marie s greeting, and when I asked myself the reason, I was forced to adopt one of three. Either she preferred the giraffe, or she had some motive, thought good by herself, for withdrawing her regard from me. But if she liked the lieutenant better, such insulting coldness to me was still unnecessary; she could have shown her regard for him without outraging me. I could find no excuse for her in any act or Word T 116 THE BLOODSTONE. of mine, so I concluded that she was a coquette, aware of my affection for her and desirous of ex hibiting her power over me in the eyes of the giraffe. But when that respectable quadruped took up his line of march for Bavaria, a couple of weeks afterward, and I learned from the doctor that Marie had refused to become Frau Lieutenant Am Khyn, geborene.von Borgen, and her manner to me continued of unabated coldness, then I con cluded that there was no coquetry, but that there was that thing of universal application, that un fortunate, lucky, mournful, consolatory thing a misunderstanding. At" which cocrclusion being safely arrived, I determined to probe it to the bottom which also is a confusion of metaphors. Meantime nearly a month slipped by, during which I had endeavored to outvie my bearitiful enemy. I showed no coldness; that would have confessed love on my part. My affectation was polite in difference. I flattered her, something that I had never done before. If she sang, I poured forth a profusion of compliments ; if she drew, I called her Angelica Kaufman; if she danced, I com pared her to La Taglioni : in short, I was exces sively impertinent; and it would have required a CLEARED!!?. 117 very sharp eye, to see that all the while my very heart was yearning to tell her how. I loved her. She saw nothing of the kind, and through her coldness occasional anger flashed as flash the Northern lights through the cold haze of Decem ber. And then the time came that I could play my part no longer, and I said that I would have an explanation at the first opportunity and I did. * T ; It was a magnificent night in the late winter, towards the end of February., The snows lay white and still in- the desolate- garden,, over the wide unshadowed iawn. The cold naked trees stuck out their hard branches in the cheerless air, and at every blast the gems of ic*e fell rattling from their coats, as the pearls fell from Bucking ham s doublet at the levee of Louis XIII. The clear blue winter skies were full of stars ; and as the branches swayed hither and thither between their light and earth, weird shadows moved writhingly over the snow. ^ Within, a genial heat from the huge porcelain stove pervaded th room, and the wax lights burned cheerfully upon the book laden tables. The doctor was at work in his study t Marie was alone in the drawing room, and I was in the cool hall standing at the door. The more I had con- 118 THE BLOODSTONE. cealed, the more, of course, I had suffered. If I were entirely wrong in attributing any kind feel ings for me to Matfe, the sooner I learned the truth the better. So I took off ray irresolution and my hat, and opened the door. She was standing at the window when I en tered, but when she turned round and- saw me, she bowed and took a seat near the table. After a sufficient silence, which gave no promise of be ing broken upon her eide, I ventured to remark that it was a beautiful night, -an observation to which she at once assented. And then I waxed straightway wroth. " FrauTehi," I said, " I have come to visit you to-night at the risk of being unwelcome and disa greeable." Fraulein von Bergen opined that the friend of her brother and her uncle had certain rights in the house, unquestionably in the drawing room, to which all were admitted. Which opinion in no wise .sweetened my disposition. " I have observed, "Fraulein, the exceeding and not flattering change in your mariner towards me since my return from the university, and I had at first attributed itr to an affection for your new Bavarian friend." " I do not know," she replied, u that I have a CLEARED!!?. 119 right to interest myself in your observations and inferences. You seem to have assumed the right of watching me." Then I exploded. u Yes, I have assumed that right, for I feel that it is one. I do not know the reason of your conduct, I only know that it is groundless, I know that I left you my kind and amiable friend, and that I returned to be met by an insulting greeting and by a cold contempt ever since. Yes, I have watched you, and -I have seen your cold, beautiful eyes watching me, full of scorn, when they should have been full of a wide ly different expression." " You are wrong," she said gently. " I have never felt scorn for you." " You would have grossly erred, had you done so, I am not made for anybody s scorn ; least of all for a woman s, least of all women s for yours." Again she raised her eyes, and their floods of light were poured full upon mine, and a crimson blush covered her face, but she made no answer, and I continued. " Men of my way of thinking attribute to wo men a power of divination. We believe that they can see affection even where it is well concealed, that they can distinguish an ardent, loving nature under any veil, and we believe that there is gen? 120 THE BLOODSTONE. tleness enough in the feminine nature at least, not to make sport of it. But I have done wrong in so thinking." My heart was b eating thickly and my voice faltered as I spoke. " "Would to God, that you had not been appointed to teach me how much 1 erred." I turned to leave her, adding, " But you .have taught me that you are not the divine creatures, which poets feign you ; and that even the gentlest extenornnay hide a callous and crueV disposition, unworthy of the loving honor which I once felt, and only deserving the bitter ness of contempt that I now feel. I have the honor, Fraulein Yon Bergen, to wish you good night," and I bowed. " Dou t go," she said. My reply was another bow, as I waited with ostentatious and rather insolent politeness. But as she did not.iijuuediately speak, I moved again. " Stay, sir," she said angrily, and with an im perious gesture. I turned obediently with a sneer upon my lip. She saw it and burst into a passion of tears. " Do you think then that I am so ignorajat of you men who live in the world ?" she cried, " your way of treating women or of shewing yourselves C I, E A R E D U P. 121 to be not the wrongers but the wronged ! You are a coward sir, to treat me so !" It was the first time that that name had ever been applied to me, and woman though she was who spoke, I could not restrain the flush and look of rage which it aroused. " You know" she continued, <( that what you have said is untrue. You know that you have sought me here, a simple German girl, whose life has only known the convent and this quiet coun try seat, and striven to win my love for the mere vanity of casting it away ; while you bestow your own, if you have any, on some grand Parisian lady." Jealous of Madame Verneuil and loving me. It was almost too much for belief. " Marie !" I said. " Yes, I was not blind to your wooing. . And I am not blind to the wretched vanity that alone induced it. Now, I can scorn you but I think my heart will break." I made one bound to her side and caught her in my arms. " Mtfirie, I love the very ground you tread up on." " Let me go, sir," she said, and strove to re lease herself. But a giant could not have broken 11 122 THE BLOODSTONE. that embrace. I put her hands aside, I gathered her up into my arms, close, close into my bosom ; and I rained my ardent kisses on her lips and forehead and eyes and murmured pet names as J held her there. And so without further explanation, each knew that the other loved and was beloved: and Marie s tears fell more gently, and when at last, she look ed up smiling, I released her with one 1 ong kiss upon the forehead. " And that French woman ? that Madame Verneuil ?" " Hush, darling, and I will tell you all about it, XII. Initial J0tt. BUT I must hurry on with my story. Hither to it has been pleasant walking through gar dens, and the long grasses and wild flowers of sunny meadows. But the dark over-shadowed bye-paths are at hand, where the rank vegetation breathes acrid odors, and where little light can penetrate and where the air is chill. Few men walk otherwise than thus, be the road long or short that leads from Eternity to Eternity, from / 124 THE BLOODSTONE. the door of birth, where we enter Time, to the portal of Death, where we quit it. I am a great advocate for early marriages. There is no check like matrimony for the errant propensities of young manhood. Few live to what are called the years of discretion without losing one if not both parents : sisters wed and get new households of their own, and the first home is lost. Then usually comes to the young man the choice between the devil and the angel. If he prefer the latter he will generally find her in the guise of a gentle wife. I believe half the worthlessness, idleness and uneuergy of batchelor- ism are products of interference and prevention of early marriages. An early marriage is not ne cessarily an imprudent one any more than the grey-beard s last wedlock is a wise one. The di vine instincts of youth will guide us more cor rectly in the choice of a companion than our world-wisdom, what we, in our corruption, call our maturer judgments. Neither are parental and guardian terrors always well founded. A young man is objected to because he is poor; be cause he is quick, careless of opinion, inclined to defy harsh judgment a disposition which pru dent old ladies call " recklessness," and which is as natural to generous youth, as scandal is to INITIATION. 125 - prudent old ladies. A young man without posi tive fixed vices, who has these three qualities, generosity 6f feeling, affectionateness and honor, may be safely trusted with the welfare of the wo man whom he loves ; my word for it, he will se cure it more certainly than he who buys a wife for two carriage horses, a sofa at the Opera, and an entrance into Mrs. Fungus "set. Marie ! never, never for a moment have I for gotten what I swore to thee, when I held the ring on thy finger r that finger whence a vein runs directly to the heart and when the white- vested priest bade me promise to devote my life to thee, and to hold thee, not as a stranger but as a por tion of myself. That old, saintly priest an an cient, almost worn-out laborer in the garden of God, who had tilled the soil of human souls so long, and who was soon to go home unto his Master, with a bosom full of golden sheaves who had transplanted thy heart into my heart till the roots of both were mingled what he said, Marie darling, have I never forgotten ; and when one day, I shall stand before our Lord for judg ment, and He asketh what were my virtues, of one only will I dare to boast, saying, " Lord, I have loved the help-meet that Thou gavest me." We were married ; Marie slept upon my bo- 126 THE BLOODSTONE. sotn. She was mine angel of the night, whose sweet voice lulled me into Dreamland she was mine angel of the morning, whose sweet voice called me back to life. And the year glided on. Often as I wrote, she would sit on a low cushion at my feet, with her brown head lying on my knee, and my left -hand drawn by hers closely round her neck, for hours. Or she would learn what songs I wrote, and would sing them to the piano, touching one or two chords, without any attempt at composition, but finding out by in stinct at -the moment what sounds best harmoniz ed with the words. Her cheerfulness was of that gentle sort which wears well yet she could be merry, and as great a tease as ever lived. I thank God that for the first year, her weeping was but little, and that little not for her own sorrows. We remained with the Doctor, who had also an office in town. He had no need, pecuniarily, to practice but, as he said himself, if he did not attend to the poor people, they would get some vile quack ; and, if they must be killed with medicine, why it was the privilege of the regular practitioner to kill them. Franz Was studying jurisprudence at Bonn, and came home only once a month, and I had . - * INITIATION. 127 twice been down to attend a meeting of the Nameless. And then at the end of the year, there oame the greatest baby ever revealed to mankind, with the roundest and openest eyes, and the most hair on its head of any neoligos upon record. View ed merely as a baby to poke your firtger at in or der to make it crow, that baby was unsurpassed, its manner of nestling its head in the maternal bosom, and its powers of looking cautiously over one shoulder and ducking suddenty back again were positively sublime. Then the child s super natural intelligence ! It actually knew, as its mother asseverated, when it was hungry. Lbe- came alarmed and bought it a skipping rope, a hoop and three different descriptions of go carts, when it was but three weeks old, lest its intellec tual development should prove too rapid for its physical health. And the picture of the young mother bending over her child, lost to all sense of surrounding ex istence, and living only in the life of the little be ing upon her lap ! I know but one picture like it, and we all know that. It is the Sacred Moth er who looks with her sweet, mournful eyes down upon her Divine Child, watching the forehead 128 THE BLOODSTONE. where day by day darkens the shadow of the Cross. Necessary concomitants of babies are babies maids, in accordance with which necessary con- cornitancy, we received into the bosom of our family the person of Miss Gertrude Krautkopf. She called herself Trudchen, which means little Gertrude, and merited that name by the fact that she measured at least four feet from omoplate to omoplate. She wag a square girl - of irreproach able morals; her acce*nt and her person were broad ; she had blue eyes, and was first cousin to a tanner well to do in the wdrld ; she wore short clothes, relative 6f grey, worsted ancles-, and had a lover whom she spoke of as my blessed Peter. At the end qf the first month, when, in paying her .wages, I threw in an additional thaler, she called me a " beautiful babe," and expressed her conviction that I was related to the angel who should overthrow.Antiehris-t. She was decidedly the unhandiest maiden I have ever known, and never did anything right except what referred to the baby. She one day broke into the study and cleaned all the object glasses of the doctor s mi croscope, they were covered, she said, with the wings and legs of nasty flies and things. She put my papers to rights and took away my lueifer . INITIATION. 129 matches for fear that I would set fire to myself in the night. But Marie suffered worst of all. She, poor child, was flouted and corrected .at every moment. Trudchen seemed to fancy her only another child over whom she had supreme authority, and once when Marie got into a passion, threatened to put her to bed and to c,all me. Every week she was threatened -with ignominious expulsion, but she defied it courageously. " Only say the word," she declared " and she was ready ; she would take her baby and the poor little mother of it and go. It was no place for them anyway. Thank heaven, she had a home of her own, and a cousin, the first tanner -in Eberfeldt ; aud if the worst came to the worst, she would , marry her bless ed Peter and the children should find a home there. Poor, honest, unhandy, imperious, Trudchen. One Christmas she gave rne a bright, green cot ton cravat, and on my birthday a toothbrush. Gentlefolks liked those French things, she said, and she supposed they must have their own way.- This brush was the softest she could find, she had tried it herself and it did not scratch her gums much. And now Trudchen, thou and thy blessed 130 THE BLOODSTONE. Peter, keep the very <Juest-house wherein I am, now writing. Good Trudchen ! Blessed Peter ! Well, it was about two years since I had quit ted the University, when I received a letter from my brother in law, calling me to a grand student reunion, to take place at Bonn. I went down and found the city full of Burschen in fanciful coats and quaint caps, with here and there among them, one or two young married men like myself in ordinary civilian s dress. We had numberless meetings and merry makings, and the antique streets sounded with joyous chorusses for a week. On Friday, the fifth day after our assemblage, Franz notified me of a special conimers, or frolic to be held at Gottesberg, a few miles up the river and eai ly in the morning we crossed the Rhine and walked in procession to that village. The day was passed in visiting the curiosities of the place, the camp of Julian the Apostate, the ruins of an ancient temple of Mercury, and the chapel, famous for its sanctity. Here in old times was held the Goding or Gottesgericht, an ancient secret tribunal, arrogating to itself the title of Gods-court and full of yet hidden signi ficance for the young students now gathered up on the heigh s there. INITIATION. 131 So the glud sun, when his course had run, went down amid the empurpledwestern clouds, and as the twilight still lingered, we entered one by one a hirge dining hall and sae down around the long table. There \Vere perhaps fifty of us. The table, was covered with all that wag- needed for a solid supper, roe-venison and succulent wild boar ham, trout from the neighboring brook and pickerel from the Rhine. When these had disappeared- the long pipes came, and conversation waxed animated. Through the soft clouds that rose from bowls of porcelain and meerohaum loomed the quaint beer glass or the long necked flask of -Rhine or Neck- ar wine. Red blushed the juice of Asinanhau- sen s grape, and the golden "light oi! the Rudes- heimer or the Braunerberger streamed fluid into the green glasses. Then as the brain began to warm with wine, rich manly voices sang the noble student-songs of Germany, and speeches were made, and loud applauses sounded. It was about ten o clock when Caspar Hefferman rose to speak. As he did so, the sword-bearers opened the doors, looked out into the hall, and then seeing the pas sages empty, closed the portals and stood beside them, holding their drawn rapiers in their hands. . 132 THE BLOODS TONE. Heffernan now made the sign by which th e mem bers of the Nameless recognized each other, and to my surprise it was answered by ail the guests. At another sign, we each drew forward and ex hibited upon our necks the Bloodstone Cross. Then Heflfernan spoke, quickly warming into a strain of great exultation as he proceeded and carrying all away by the witchery of his eloquence. He spoke of oppressors and of oppressed, of hu man dignity and the rights of mankind) of mor tal law making and immortal Justice, of wails that mounted hourly up to Heaven and of bitter retribution to come. Yet, all this was vague and dreamy and .indefinite. "What the man meant was in his own soul. We were satisfied to be made drunken by his peerless eloquence. Our lips curled when he uttered his fierce sarcasms, our indignation kindled at his pictures of suffer ing, our blood fired as we listened to his Demos thenic denunciation. It was not at all clear who were the wronged and who the wrongers, who should reap punishment and who be lifted out of wretchedness. "We only quaffed his intoxicating eloquence as one one would quaff wine. At last he turned to us, . his brothers, the chil dren of the Nameless, and drew a picture of hero ic deeds be done one day by us, so vivid that INITIATION. 133 we seemed even then to hear the blessings of re deemed mankind uttered upon us. But many of us had taken but the first step, the orator said, we were lingering before the veil of the Isis, but to-night if we were ready, aye npw> this hour ; this moment, the veil should be withdrawn. We hailed the proposal with a shout, warmed with good wine and fired by his oratory we would have done anything. At a given signal we passed one by one into a small side room. There was erected a kind of altar, and there such of us as were not already all initiated swore, by what to him was holiest, to carry out the behests of the Society at any risk ; never to reveal any of its acts or purposes, and to be faithful in all things to its laws and the com mands of its great council, who, twenty-five in number, met at Heidelberg. Never a very practical person, I had now lost what common .sense I ever had ; I was possessed by a sort of delirium, my excitement was greater because it was vague, and in this condition I en tered the room, took the dread oath and came forth again. So was it too with Frauz, but his mood changed so soon as we had broken up our meeting and were on our way home. " Paul," he said, " we have done very wrong in 12 , 134 THE BLOOD-STONE. taking the oath last night, and I shudder now when I think of it, and of what consequences may ensue from it." " Oh, pooh, we are but a knot of young fellows without any very terrible purposes and do not run much danger of doing wrong." " You speajt more lightly than you think, my brother," he said. " Do you recall that dark sat urnine man who sate at Heffernan s right hand. That sallow face, and wavy damp black hair, and those distant looking, immense black eyes show the fanatic who can conceive, any scheme, and who would recoil at nothing. Heffernan also, is an enthusiast, with coolness enough. to keep his purposes veiled, but with resolute fanaticism enough to follow them however wild they may be. Paul, I have sinned in taking that .oath. What, what will be the result of that one hasty deed !" I could not help being affected by his earnest ness as I answered, " Yes, it was hasty. But the oath was takxin and it must be kept." Franz looked directly into my eyes as he said, "Paul, we have grievously erred, we have cast aside Heaven s most ennobling gift to man. We * INITIATION. 135 have sworn away our free-will, we have made our selves bond slaves to a mystery, we have chosen men for the masters of our very souls, whose des tinies we have blindly placed in their hands, and now" and as Franz continued, his face grew pale as ashes, " that oath was a sin, and I tell you that if it would compel me to commit another, and perhaps a greater crime, I will not keep it, so help me God 1" . Jj * " * - *.., ., ; ** " -*; * *. . f %,- , w f" 4 *% *-.. XIII. rMHE Autumn came on with its varied foliage JL and its sanguine sunset, and passed away, and the winter set in with cold drizzling rains arid murky skies. An English relative of ours had -died, leaving some entangled property to my mother, and early in December I was obliged to go to London to attend to it. Before my busi ness was nearly concluded, however, I received letters from my wife urging me to come imme diately home. One of the usual legal postpone ments occurred about this time, and I was ena bled to comply with her wishes. JOY AND WOE. 137 Everything looked cold, desolffte and dreary ill the wintry twilight, as I reached the gate of my home. The discolored anow was bea.ten hard upon the path which wound through the leafless trees, and there were none of the pleasant sounds of the country heard, no cackling of fowls, nor bustle of attendants. Even my dog did not bark. The. house was shut up, and not one twinkle of light showed it to be inhabited. A cold chill ran over me as I rang the bell ; which was not an swered with the usual punctuality, or at least, so it appeared to rhe. At last I heaRi a shuffling along the hall, and a fumbling at the door; and as the latter was slowly opened, a cross female vpic e was audible. " What kind of an hour is this to come home ? just when tea is over ? there will be fresh tea to make, I suppose. Some people have no decency. Well: come in, will you ?" and there stood Trud- chen, holding the door handle in one hand, and a small tray with a cup and saucer on it in the other. " How do ? Trudchen ? all well ?" " Ah ! thou good Lord ! did I not knoV it was the Herr !" And so speaking she dropped the cup and saucer and incontinently kissed me upon both cheeks. 138 THE BLOODSTONE. " Come in" she said, " thou poor soul. Come out of the freezing wind there. The kettle is just a-boiling and a hot cup of tea will soon do you good. Give me that dear little cloak and the blessed hat, and the beloved gloves." She took each article as she named it. and then seeming suddenly to get a new idea, threw them in a bundle upon the floor, and leaving the door wide open, turned, went crash through the frag ments of the china, and darted to the study door, which she flung open crying out. " It is he, dear lady, it is the poor little man come home. It is the master, Herr Doctor, but he has broken a tea cup." Tea was just over, and the table was still stand ing. Marie and her uncle and Franz, with the child upon his knee were seated about the stove, and old Soc was busy removing the plates. I had embraced my wife, and was advancing to shake hands with the Doctor, when Trudchen rushed like a whirlwind between us, tore the child from Franz and pushed it into my arms exciaiming, " Will he never speak to the child ? Is his heart frozen ? His own flesh and blood too ; it is shameful !" Then apparently satisfied with my reception of JOY AND WOE. 1 her baby, she stormed out of the room saying " Now, I will get him some tea." When the ordinary first questions and answers were over, I observed that my brother in law was greatly changed. He had grown thin and pale ; and a strange heavy melancholy had become the characteristic of his face. To my inquiries, he only answered that he had not been very well for some days, and then turned the conversation. The night passed on in talk about London and my voyage thither, and when bed time arrived, we wished each other good night and retired. " Marie," I asked ti soon as we had entered our room, " what is the matter with Franz." " I do not know, "-she said, " he has been ill ever since his return from Heidelberg." " From Heidelberg ?" "Yes, I wrote to you that he had gone there. He went about a week after you had left, re mained absent two or three days, and has been ever since just as you saw him to-night." " But have you asked him no questions ?" " Yes, at first ; but he merely replied that he was unwell, and showed so evident a disinclina tion to converse about himself, that I have desist ed. Unole declares as usual that the stomach is out of order, and treats him with quinine. But 140 THE BLOODSTONE. I think that his mind is more ill than his body. Perhaps lie will be more communicative to you." " Well, the night for sleep : light cometh with the morning." The next morning after breakfast," I proposed to Franz, as the weather was clear and cold, to walk up the river As far as Neuwied, on pretence of wanting some gloves, for which the Moravians of that town are famous. He assented and we started . On this road, the western bank of the river, there is an ancient Station of the Cross, leading from the town. That is there are seven shrines each containing a picture of some act qr suffering of the Redeemer as he bore his cross toward the Mountain of the Crucifixion. At each of these it was the custom of the Catholic to stop and pray, making, at certain periods of. the year, proces sions for that purpose, and halting about a mile from Andernach at a road-side Altar whereon the Mass was celebrated. Now as we passed one of these stations, which represented our Lord falling beneath the weight of his cross, I. saw Franz fix his eyes earnestly upon it, and his lips moved .as if in prayer. T^f* 1 JOY AND WOE. 141 " Franz, my dear brother, you are greatly changed since I left ; you are pale and broken hearted looking ; what is it ails you ?" " Something very hard to cure, Paul." What is it ?" " An evil deed that cannot be undone." " Do you mean the Nameless Franz ?" " I do." " But why Buffer it to destroy your good spirits away thus ? What after all is it ? A student no tion of mystery which will wear itself out with our advancing age." , " Say rather which will wear away our lives ; if not our souls in unavailing remorse." " But Franz, you did not use to take so gloomy a view of a matter : why should you forebode so of this. If it lead to any serious consequences ; if it lead to crime,"- " It does, lead to crime," he said hotly, " to crime, fiendish as ever Hell suggested, or man was willing to conceive." I started ; and looked at him. There was no mistaking either his earnestness or his perfect ra tionality. " What can you mean, Franz ?" " I will tell you. Just after you left for Lon don, I was summoned to q, meeting of the most 142 THE BLOODSTONE. . enthusiastic 6f the Nameless and well are they so called," he added bitterly, " for their thoughts may not be named. And there was proposed, and plotted a devilish act an^-a a deed with out a name. I will not tell you, Paul, I will fall alone : one victim is enough. That dark browed Councillor, and Heffernan,did all. Oh, my God, one hasty deed ! one evil deed !" " But you could not consent" to a crime, my brother." "I did not consent to it, I spurned it indig nantly. I spoke against it in the names of God and man: I shouted my negation; but it was voted and it is resolved." " But why not threaten to make it public." " Because of the oath we swore, Paul Calvert, the accursed secret oath." The terms of the oath came back upon me : the dreams of my "youth came back : my inherited and self-educated ideas of a" word of honor : my hatred of informers. It seemed to me, that I had leagued myself with demons ; that I had shut myself out forever from my fellows; from my wife ; from my little one. I sat down by the road side and covered my face with my hands. Then I rose gloomily and said, " We swore together Franz, together let us J O Y A N D "W O E . 143 bear the Consequences; tell me this meditated deed." " No," he safd, " one victim is enough." I argued, but he told me of my wife and child, that my life and its. interests were not mine but theirs. i I plead with him, but he answered firmly ; " No Paul, one victim is enough." . With this I .was obliged to content myself for the present : and the long walk brought us both back to calmness, Franz, having resolved to seek a religious solution of his difficulties, and I, after my dreamy habit, finding relief in the vagueness of the threatened danger. In human life there is but one step from the shade into the sunshine. On reaching home we learned that my wife had issued invitations for a rejoicing party in honor of my return, and she and Trudchen and old Soc, the cook and the chambermaid, were greatly oppressed with busi ness. There were .pies and Kuechen to be made : dishes of unknown ingredients to be concocted j wines to be brought from the cellar and ticketed ; Sauer-braten to be cooked for the Burgomeister, love-cake for the maidens, Kraut and haasen- pfeffer for the fat major commanding at Ander- 144 THE BLOODSTONE. nach, and pumpernickle for the lieutenant from Wesphalia. Fiddlers must be had from town for the waltz of the girls after supper. JThe -dairy women must be hunted for and laden with orders for unlimited cream. It was hinted that if Franz wouW take his rod and whip a few trout out of the burn at Nettehaus, his labors should be rewarded with gratitude. Would I just run up to Coblenz and get a bit of roe venison ? Would Uncle be sure of the wine that the major at least might be sat isfied ? Of the quantity of mingled gibberish and "nig ger," which old Soc uttered, fondly supposing it to be German : of the masses of crockery smashed by unhandy Trudchen; of the amount of scold ing, blundering, cooking and fretting on that eventful day, there is no record extant, neither can my memory do it adequate justice. Suffice it, that the morrow dawned and waned, and at a >good early German hour say six o clock, the guests assembled. There was Bur- gomeister Kugelspiel and Frau BurgGmeisterinn Kugelspiel and the two plump maidens who were pledges of their affection and the girl who car ried the lantern, for the worthy people proposed to walk home. There was Major von Schnur- JOY AND WOE. 145 -. *i- . * bart and two young lieutenants who were addic ted to new uniforms and emaciate moustachios. There v were a dozen girls and mamas and burgher papas of more or less obesity according to their callings ; and most of the worthy men brought long pipes with them, except the officers who- smoked only segars, as military men are indeed bound to do. " ; X -T . * -.- And in the kitchen, were two tail corporals and* two handicraftsmen, who were lovers of the par lor folk s handmaidens, and the blessed Peter had come from Elberfeldt and they danced there to the rich, guggling whistle of Socrates the Black. So they ate and they drank : the ladies sipping their coffee and causing pounds of sweet cake to disappear, and the worthy burghers pitching into the solids and the Rhenish wines with that enor mous power of deglutition confined to German burghers alone upon this earth. And having eaten they smiled fat smiles expressive of^ much calm joy, and drank their black coffee and their glass of Schnapps, and retired to the study where they smoked contemplative pipes and were still. |3ut the young people waltzed in the drawing room, and the plump mamas played whist in the corners, and the papas strayed in when their 13 146 THE BLOODSTONE. . . 3f pipes were emptied, and Marie moved about like an angel carrying jpy in her motions and bene dictions in her smile. Now and then, she and I, as tjermari house holders should do, went down into the kitchen to see how all fared there and we were both pleased with Trudchen the unhandy. Once she was caught exhibiting the baby; but oftener sitting opposite her Peter and gazing at him lovingly as he ate and drank : once I saw her executing a slow waltz with vaccine gracefulness : and once patting his hand as he smoked ; and my last vision of her that night was hef pressing tenderly upon his acceptance a gigantic chunk of sausage, and when he bit out the first vast mouthful, her heart melted within her and she sank upon his bosom overcome with tenderness and said, < ...;* " Oh thou blessed Peter f" * ";*. Y, *> * *- . ; . ..-, " J-- ?-;>;*; XIV. e p a t s u p a n the I a & s THE next morning the mail brought me letters which required my immediate presence in England, and my departure was fixed for the following day. As soon as this was made known Franz told me what his resolve had been. He had gotten what light he could upon the subject, and had resolved that no vow could bind to the commission of a crime, either religiously or hon orably and also that it was his duty to use his utmost exertions to prevent its success. 148 THEBLOODSTONE. He had therefore written to Caspar Heffernan and to Heyne, the black-haired Councilman, re quiring from them a renunciation of their project, apd threatening in the event of their refusal, to lay the matter before the authorities, and he had received their replies this morning. " Well, Franz," I asked, " what reply do they make ?" " They say," he answered, " that a decree once passed, is irrevocable that they will not even modify their project, and that they do not fear my threats." And what will you do?" I will go to Berlin to-night, and will give at least such information as will prevent the execu tion of the crime." " But is not this a betrayal of your com rades ?" " It js no betrayal, Paul. I will never tell, even for the torture, who^ have conceived this deed ; but I will say that it is projected, and must be well guarded against. But I will not be a 1 will not stain my soul with this crime ; and no law, human or divine, emanating from God s justice or from man s code of honor, re quires it at my hands." " What is this secret, Franz ?" / THE SPOTS UPON THE BLOODSTONE.! 49 " I will not tell you." " Am I not one of the Nameless do I not also wear the Bloodstone ?" " It is true, and I mourn for it. But you must ask what you seek from another source." " But Franz, if there be danger to you, -I can help to guard you against it." " If there be danger, Paul," he said sadly, but with immovable firmness, " if there be danger, one victim is enough." Further argument was useless ; he started that night for Berlin, and I saw him depart with an indefinable terror which I could neither account for, nor get rid of. The next morning I also took boat down the river for Bonn on my way to London. My banker resided at Bonn, and 1 wanted money for several purposes, so that I was compelled to re main over night. I had made my business ar rangements, and was writing in my room at the Hotel de Treves, when about eight o clock a knock sounded at my door, and as I cried come in/ the door opened and Heyne entered. I looked into his inscrutable black eyes, and I believe turned pale but he took no notice of it, and without speakin<r, made the recognition sign of ,,, .?* 4*- -,_ 150 THE BLOODSTONE. the Society. I replied to it, and pointed to a chair, which he refused with a nod of the head. " "What can I do for yo ?" I inquired. " I have come," he said, " to summon you to a meeting." " But, my dear sir, it is impossible most im portant business calls me to London.* " Morp important business calls you to go with me. But you will be required only to resign your sleep. It is to night that the meeting will be held, and you can resurne your voyage to-mor row." " "What is the object of this meeting ?" " You will be told by him who will preside at it." " Where and at what hour will.it be held." " For the time, two hours after midnight. For the place, I will .guide you to it." "But I will not be led there blindly, I am no child to be frightened by mysteries, I will not go." " You will be compelled to go." " Indeed !" I said, rising, " who then will compel me ?" " Your own pledged word of honor and your oath." " Leave me for five minutes," I said " at the THE SPOTS UPON THE BLOODSTONE. 151 expiration of that time you shall receive my an swer." He made no objections, but silently left th* room. As soon as I found myself alone, I endeavored to reflect calmly upon my position. I recalled all that Fr anz had told me, and all that he feared. I knew him to be cool, courageous, and neither over imaginative nor over prudent. I recalled my first ideas on joining the Society ; it was a mere student act, every body did it/ there were twenty such unions at Bonn. But the after ini tiation into closer union was an act of intoxica tion was the deed of a moment of excitement ; and yet, all this gave me no excuse. I had given my word of- honor, my loyalty that feeling which I had nurtured and pampered with reading and dreams of impossible things that was at stake. Besides, why should I fancy that any thing terrible was to be done? If an evil deed were meditated, I would at least be there to op pose it perhaps to prevent it. " Well !" said Heyne, opening the door, " the five minutes are gone." . "I am ready," I replied} "let -us go." So out we went through the passages of the hotel, down the long staircases, and out of a side *i .- ; - :- ; 152 THE BLOODSTONE. -*.-* door into a -narrow street leading from the mar ket place to the nvej. It was deserted, or almost so, even at that early hour. A dim lamp shone in two or three shop windows ; sounds of talking or laughter or singing came from the wine and beer cellars, and through the Gothic windows of the Church of St. Martin the lamp of the Sanctu ary glimmered redly. We crossed the bridge of boats beneath which the turbulent wintry river was rushing violently, to Beuel, and through that village out into the country. The night was cloudy, although there was a brilliant moon and as the -cold wind .drove the vapory masses over her disk, the eerie shadows crept along the earth. My comrade did not speak, and he was too little to my fancy to induce me to break the silence. At about a quarter of a mile from Beuel, we found two horses picketed near a .tree. A man rose from the ground as we approached, and turned towards us. Heyne whispered to him, and then saying to me, " We mo.unt here," got into the saddle impatiently. I followed his. example, and the horses sprang forward. Fleet through cold air was that fear- ful ride; fleet through the rare moonlight and the- frequent shadows. We avoided the villages that stud the banks of the Ehine ; but as I would A ,4 THE SPOTS UPON THE BLOODSTONE.153 follow my companion through some bye-path, I could hear their faint hum, and see the gleaming of their lights. Sometimes we galloped over the desolate fields, whence the harvest had long be fore been gathered : sometimes we floundered through a drift of enow, heaped up by the winds of the last storm. As we rode past Erpel, the distant chimes told eleven and, a few moments after, we halted. It was only to change horses, however, and then once more we dashed forward. Once, and once only, we clattered through the single street of a wretched hamlet, and roused perhaps the slum bering hind from his hard bed ; but for the most part we were in the open country. Heyne seemed guided by instinct. He would strike boldly across wide arable lands where I could see no pathway : he never drew bridle at diverg ing roads; he did not slacken his pace when wayside forests shut out entirely the intermittent moonlight. In about two hours we again changed horses, which were always ready for us upon the road. Here I complained of thirst and of fatigue, and with an angry " pshaw !" my conductor muttered to the man, who produced a bottle of Bordeaux wine and a large leathern cup, which he thrust -,-;? . 154 THE BLOODSTONE. . . .0 into my hands. I drank freely, and felt my strength renewed. And now a strange exhilara tion took possession of my spirits. This wild ride was a realization of some of my dreams of yore. Whither I was going I did not know, and I soon ceased to care my errand was forgotten, my fears and hesisation .were laid aside ; I only felt the bounding of the generous beast beneath me ; my blood flowed warmly through my veins, and my easily excited nature yielded to the inspiring swift motion. "We went almost as the crow flies, straight- on our course. Occasionally I could see the Rhine, now black beneath the passing clouds, now rush ing onward coated with flashing silver. As the night deepened every sign of human waking dis appeared in the isolated dwellings and larger villages that we passed. Only in the forges did man appear to take no rest ; but the columns of smoke rose from the tall chimneys, and I could hear the roar of the ascending flames and the clank of the iron pokers, as the furnace doors were flung open for new fuel, and the fierce red glow streamed out a moment luridly into the night. On through the cold wintry air through the weird shadows and infrequent light, till we had passed a village which I seemed to recognize *X - .^W SPOTSUPON THE BLOODSTONE. 155 as Niederbieber, and as we stopped our panting horses, th& church bell sounded "one!" " We have but a short distance left," said Heyne " we will walk it." All round us now rose the thick forest of gloomy pines ; and the road led along the ice- clogged bed of a torrent which in Spring and Autumn tore its angry way through briers and tangled cedar brakes. Only rare rays of light found their way through the thick evergreens as we rapidly climbed a somewhat steep ascent. No sound broke the stillness save .the sound of our own footsteps, the plaintive cheep of the bat, and the wild oo-la-loo of the screech owl. Suddenly Heyne paused, and I followed his example, and we listened I not knowing where fore and then the stillness was broken. Tramp, tramp through the gusty night, like the measured sound of the surf heard from afar it might be the feet of fifty, men, it might be of an hundred. Onward towards us on the fitful wind, without any pause or any sound of music. Nearer and nearer through the dusk pines that skirted the frozen highway, until my heart beat thickly arid in unison with the fall of the advancing feet. Tramp, tramp, and the shadowy figures of the night marchers emerge, and a long procession *- **- 156 THE BLOODSTONE. passes without a look cast towards us. One sign from their leader answered by Heyne, served for all recognition and they go on, indistinct through the shadows, and we. follow them and fall in with their solemn measure, and tramp along with them, on through the gusty night. And the infrequent moonlight still shines, and the eerie shadows creep along the earth. A short descent down a hill-side, and a black and rugged--mass rises before us. Strong ma sonry with torn irregular battlements ? and great rifts in its massive sides. The dry vines rattle at the touch of the wind ; the young cedars toss and wave upon the ruined towers. The owl hoots above that antique dungeon of Braunsberg and we enter the cfoorless port, and form a circle around its sides, and. the tramp ceases and all is still. There is a huge black mass of fallen wall in the centre, and five dusk forms are upon it^-I can see them even now in the veiled light and Heyne is no longer beside -me. Then a low voice speaks through the stillness. " Brothers, we have been betrayed, and the traitor is here, and ive are here for judgment. Our council met and decreed an act of holy ven geance ; and the traitor heard it and has betray- , SPOTS UPON THEBLOODSTONE. 157 ed it. The police are searching now for him and for us ; they can find us only through him. Shall they find us ?" A low murrnur runs round the ruin.* , " Shall they find hitn ?" The murmur is angry, like the first sounds of a storm. " What then shall be done with him ?" There is a silence heavy and ominous, and I listen for the answer in wonderment and expecta tion. "Shall he die?" ". "And the deep base of the black-browed Heyne answers " He shall die !" and the murmur of the circle says " He shall die !" Then another voice, musical and firm, is heard. <{ The charge is false -I did not betray you." It is the voice of Franz von Bergen, my bro ther s voice, and I shout his name out and spring toward* him, A dozen strong arms seize me and draw me back. My blood is up, and I fight fiercely but in silence and while the struggle goes forward, I hear and see what follows " "Who proves the accusation ?" I do and I and I," and three step forward before the judges. What did the accused ?" 14 158 THE BLOODSTONE. " He gave to us, disguised as members of the police, information which would prevent the exe cution of the decree of the Council. Further more, he wrote the sam,e to Berlin, and this we swear upon our honor," and the three fall back. "But I named no. names I refused to give any sign of recognition by which any of you might be known," cries Franz. " He has betrayed in part," says the deep bass w he will betray in all. Let him die." Once more I hear my brother s voice. Solemn and sweet it sounds there " Thou shalt do no murder !" There is a swaying and a murmuring among the men-a-I hear the words " He shall not die." A cloud heavier than usual blots the moonlight out. " Courage, Franz !" I shout, and I struggle with tenfold strength. " Courage, my brother !". The grasp of my captors relaxes. I break from them and bound towards Franz. There is a flash and the report of a pistol. The fierce wind, sweeps along in a suddep aud furious gust the dark cloud is swept away swifty,.and the full glory of the moon pours down within the ruin of Braunsberg, and I see lying there at my feet the dead body of my brother. There is a blue bullet wound upon his temples, from which THE SPOTS UPON THE E LOO D ST ONE.159 a few drops trickle and congeal in the keen air. A smile is on his lips : the Cross of Bloodstone i& suspended exposed upon his breast. Motionless, idealess, I stand there. Tramp, tramp, through the night so-und the retreating feet of the Nameless ; tramp, tramp, beneath the du-sk pines, along the frozen highway. And the wintry wind wails gustily, and the infrequent moonlight shines, and the eerie shadows creep along over the blood stained earth. ** V- * / * * f 4 V- - -* I STOOD for a few minutes thus, and then, struck by a sudden impulse of terror, turned and fled away. I had not gone very far, how ever, when my arm was caught, and I turned to see Heyne s gloomy face. " Our horses are waiting," he said, " and you are wanted in London." The only thing that struck me particularly in this remark was that I, could go, was to go to London to. another and distant country, and I yielded myself obediently to the guidance of the * RESULTS. 161 Once more we were mounted and riding through the waning night. But we did not re turn as we came ; but passing Niederbieber and holding somewhat south ward and towards the river, we swept behind Irlich and Fahr to within half a mile of Hammerstein^ where we dismount ed and walked down to the bank. Black and furious is the course of the Rhine in the angry winter months. Black and furious was its course that night as we embarked in -a large flat-bottomed, sharp bowed boat, upon its rough , headlong current. The current itself runs at the rate of nine miles an hour at this season ; ths strong wind blew directly abaft, and filled our one large sail, and four strong oarsmen relieved each other, and two by two worked wearilessly. We rather flew thaa sailed. The shores moved swiftly past like shadows : the waters, cloven by the sharp cutting prow, foamed and hissed angri ly along the sides, and so the night waned, and the grey misty morning had begun to appear, and the shrinking moon had grown dim ere we landed above Beuil , and crossed the bridge of boats to Bonn. Heyne led me on through the same sleep ing street, in at the same side door up to my room at the Hotel de Treves. I 162 THE BLOODSTONE. " Remember," he said, -" that you sail for Lon don in a few hours. Remember also the oath that you have sworn, and remember how the Nameless punish." He left me, and I was alone, and still possessed by that one idea of personal safety and desire to get to England. So the hour came,- and I was borne away down the Rhine through the remain ing glories of the river, through flat Westphalia and still flatter- Holland, to Rotterdam, and so across the sea to Dover and to London. The business which so imperatively demanded my presence was the settling of an estate. My personal appearance was required about half an hour every three days, for some reason hidden among legal mysteries, and probably known to some lawyers. It occupied but very little of my attention. Then the time, what should I do with that? I was no longer in imminent peril but the leisure ! The leisure, with the thought it brought ! And with the visions that it brought I tried seeing the wonders of the town, but it was useless. G6 where I would, it was not Lon don but Braunsberg that 1 saw. If I listened to Theatre or Opera orchestra, or to the playing of a military band, my soul kept time to the music with memories of the tramp tramp through the E E S U L T 8. 163 forests that border the ruin. If I saw a wall, it was the masonry of that old keep. If ar wind swept the stony streets, I thought that it rustled through the tangled cedar brakes and ancient pines. I then sought for relief in society, to which I had free access but hollow as the gay world appears to most observers, it seemed doubly so now to me. A certain vague terror and an in distinctness of memory prevented any conversa tion from interesting me, any ordinary pleasure from producing excitement or forgetfulnesS of sejf. It was the same with literature. My en deavors to fix my attention upon any book, his tory or romance, essay or poem, were futile ; at the third page, my mind was away from the au thor s thoughts to the dusk German forest, the night ride and the vengeance. This vagueness was dissipated, and the settled frame in which I was to continue for a longtime, was produced by the letters from home. Those terrible letters, how I dreaded them. I avoided the Post Office, inventing countless excuses to satisfy myself for so doing. I feared even to meet a post man ; I shuddered at the sight of a note or letter left upon my table during my absence. But they came at last. If I had avoided the Post Office 164 THE BLOODSTONE. my solicitor had not, and with courteous care he had ordered communications to be sent to my address, and so those letters came. I knew them long before I read the addresses, and I sate down in an arm chair and tried to for get that they lay there upon my table. Then I persuaded myself that twenty little matters were to be done about the room before I might read them ; and when at last I had read the address, I examined the seals and noticed a flaw upon one of the impressions, and beguiled more time by wondering whether the flaw were in the cutting of the stone, or merely the result of haste in seal ing. And when that could occupy me no longer I laid them down, and took them up again a dozen times before I broke the seal and read. I left my wife s last, and read one from Heffernan. It was short, and strangely ironic. We were all murderers, he said, and all doomed. He cursed the- Society, its members, the hour that he joined it himself. He said that he was haunt ed, and he described that haunting with fearful brilliancy and detail ; and he said that he intend ed to drink and drown his memory ; to drink himself into idiocy if he could, and so he ended abruptly wanting, as he said, no answer. Then there was a letter from the Doctor, de- **.; RESULTS. 165 tailing the discovery of the body, and the legal proceedings. The inquest had given a verdict.of suicide, but he himself had examined the body of his nephew, and the shot never came from his own hand. It had been fired by ^a. much taller person, for the ball, after piercing the skull, had gone down through the brain. Besides, no man arranged his person after death, and a small cross of bloodstone hung in such a position that any motion of the body after it were placed, would cause it to fall upon one side. Neither was any pistol found. For his own part, the same proofs were conclusive against suicide or a duel and he Heeded no proof he knew his boy, and knew that he was too amiable for the one and too religious for the other. Franz, he conclu ded, had been murdered ; but God was just, and he would yet discover the murderers, and avenge the innocent blood. The letter was stern and full of a determined will, now thoroughly aroused. .. , . Again I trifled before I could open Marie s missive ; but it must be done. " Oh, Paul, why have you not written? More than two weeks away, and not one word from you, and I alone here with this terrible anguish. 166 THE BLOODSTONE. Oh, if you could have seen him, as he lay in the hall there, with that blue, cruel spot upon his beautiful forehead, and the black thin streak of blood that had flowed down into his curls, and lay there now dried and black." If I could have seen him ! Good God ! did I not see him now ? -There he lay, amid the lines traced by my wife s hand there, upon the very letter which her fingers had folded and sealed there he lay, as still and as dead as he did among the lime dust and broken fragments and trampled snows of Bruunsberg. And if I looked at the fire, I saw hrm aniid the coals and if I looked at my pillow, his pale head with its bullet wound lay there. If I could have seen him. Father in Heaven, will the day ever come when I shall cease to see him ? " They have accused him," continued the letter, " of suicide, those cold strange men ; but they little knew how pure and good, and pious he was. But they have failed to persuade the clergy of it, and Franz sleeps by his mother in the chancel of St. Genevieve s. But I am very lonely and sad, my husband. I want you beside me to counsel me to help me bear this sorrow patiently. My heart wants your strong, RESULTS. 167 loving heart, darling, to lean on in its broken- neSs." When I read that sentence the choking sobs rose up in my throat, as they rise even now that I write it, and the bitter, bitter tears gushed from my eyes and dripped heavily drop by drop upon the letter. But the weeping brought me no relief, and when it was over I went on . reading. " Do come home. Or write to tell me when that wearisome business will be finished when you vill bring me back my only support your presence and your love. Come, Paul, come back to me." The effect produced by these letters was at first a dull, blank feeling, out of which I passed into a horror of terror which endured, I sup pose, for an hour, but in which I suffered the torments of an age of common anguish. This also went over, and I settled into a condition of etill suft ering. If I seem to have dwelt too long on the descrip tion of my boyhood, of what I have called my self-education, it was in order to make clear two prominent qualities. The one a tendency to reverie, with a great power of persuading myself that my reveries were realities ; the other, an *V P ?. . %-* 168 THE BLOODSTONE. overstrained, erroneous idea of honor and loyal ty. This latter had been nursed by stories of chivalry ; histories of devotion to a person or a cause ; exaggerated pictures of the Cavaliers un der Charles L, and of the Scotch Highlanders in the days of poor Prince Charlie. These qualities revived novv. with the greater strength because of the unsettled condition" of my mind ; and the re sult to me was as follows. That, having once united myself to the Nameless, our fates were thenceforth inseparable that I was accessory to the assassination of my brother-in-law, and that I was irrevocably bound never, to confess any knowledge of the deed or of the circumstances connected with it. I had a sort of sullen resignation. Fate had thrown me into a position for which there was no relief, consequently I must suffer with what pa tience or stoicism I could get. This became my monomania. Meantime I was haunted. The presence of Franz, still and dead, with the wound upon his forehead, never left me. I saw it during rny walks, my actions, my reveries : when I re tired to sleep, I thought that his cold cheek rest ed white upon the pillar near mine. The thought of returning home of facing my wife seemed a mere impossibility. I could not RESULTS. J69 even write to her, nor to her uncle. Letter fol lowed letter, each more urgent than the last, for my return, and all were left unanswered. My business was all settled, and the winter had worn away, and yet I lingered, and the letters came full of anxiety and doubt and fear and I did not, I could not reply to them. Finally, towards the close of February, my solicitor showed me a letter which he had received, demanding news of me, asking whether I were dead or alive, and an nouncing that Dr. Hoffnitz had left Andernach for London in search of me. The lawyer seemed very curious as to the cause of my not writing home, and I muttered something about the miscarriage of mails and the pressure of business, and so hurried away to my rooms, leaving him gravely shaking his head. My only thought was how to escape from London. First I thought of America, but there my mother s first question would be for Marie. Passports and the police rendered it too easy to trace a person on the Continent. Ireland I thought must be my place of refuge. I had heard of it as a wild and lawless country, and there I would be safe with my secret. While still deliberating, Dr. Hoffuitz entered my rooms and from that moment I. resigned myself. I \ - 170 THE BLOODSTONE. * felt as if he had arrested me. I saw no escape, and prepared to accompany him at once. He was much changed, absent and thoughtful throughout our journey, which prevented his otherwise inevitable, observation and remark up on, me. But we went moodily on our way, and once more I saw the cold winter sun shine down upon the Roman tower and ruined palace-walls of antique Andernach once more I saw the beautiful face of my beloved wife, and shuddered as her warm arms circled my neck and her warm lips were pressed upon mine. ./T : , . * 4 . ** XVI. - . <jT - WHAT is the power of one deed ? Has it no limit ? Is there no end to its creation of disastrous consequences ? Not boundless desire can heal the wound it makes ; not penitence un measured can lessen its force, not tears and utter brokenness of heart and solemn earnest purpose of future good can atone for that one frightful deed. If I could have got near to God, I might have had relief, but fervently religious though I .. 172 THE BLOODSTONE. " ** "iLJI naturally was, I could not even look thitherward. A kind of despair possessed me, not a despair of His mercy, but of my own will to ask for it. I had but one thought, and from it nothing could distract me. * Among my fellows in the street, in the crowded assembly, in society I saw the one terrible Pres ence. All men looked like Franz. No reason ing, no unnatural ness, no effort of the intellect could master that imagination. I saw the resem blance vivid and unrnistakeable in the wrinkled face crowned with white scattered hairs ; saw it in the round, ordinary features of the chubby child. It startled me in the brown peasant girl whom I passed upon the highway, it looked out on me fixedly from the inane lineaments of the shop dandy. The big, dull, blue, German eyes, the keen, small, black orbs of the Jew tradesman were Franz s own brown, liquid, gentle eyes. I saw his face in that of the dancing girl ; I shud dered and hurried on without reply, when a stran ger .stopped me to demand whither a road or riv er lead. The likeness of my wife to her dead brother seemed to increase every day and I could not even look upon the face of my child. Her playful outstretching of the arms to me, her in- POWER OF ONE HASTY DEED. 173 nocent smile, her voice, her very existence were agonies to me. In the tree tops there was no sound for me but the rushing of the midnight wind through the gloomy pines of Braunsberg. In the sound of horse hoofs or the march of men, I heard but the cruel tramp that rose dull through the mists of that early morning. The breaking of a twig, the whizz of a passing bird, the slow fall of a leaf through the quiet air made my heart beat with indescribable terror. If I saw a uniform in .the distance, I skulked into some lane or bye-path, lest the soldier might be seeking for me as a witness on a new inquest. It was rumored that the King was about to make his annual tour down the Rhine, and I fancied that he, himself was coming to inquire into the death of the student. I pass over the oral repetition of what had been written to me, the account of the discovery of the body, the inquest, the burial, the mysterious bloodstone, the bitter weeping of my poor wife, the stern denunciation and threats of her uncle. This was a trial that I had foreseen and was pre pared to endure. But then followed allusions to and reminiscences of Franz until my soul seemed wearing out within me. My changed mood was . . 174 THE BLOODSTONE. of course observed at last, and I had to baffle curiosity. To the question " What is the matter ? I at first returned evasive answers, to persistancy in the question I opposed sullenness. Marie with her feminine gentleness and trust in me soon sigh ed and ceased to ask me anything more, and it was easy enough to avoid the doctor, who prob ably soon discovered some excellent medical rea son for my changed mood. Hefferman had removed to Andernach soon after the funeral of my brother-in-law, and was, now a confirmed sot. I never saw him but once, and that was in the Church standing by the tomb of the dead. He saw and recognized me, but did not speak, only he laughed a horrid laugh and left the place at once, reeling as he- walked. And so the spring came on, and the trees bud ded and leaved out, and the voices of birds and hum of insects began to fill the golden air, but there was no Spring for me. I loved to take long walks alone, I would cross to Nenwied and go back to that ancient ruin, and sit down there upon the mass of fallen wall and gaze? there at the Dead as if I could gaze it away. I would try to convince myself that the body was not there, I would pass my hands over V*,* 1 * . " .** POWER OF ONE HASTY DEED. 175 f~ the place but still I saw it, with my fingers cut ting through it, but not removing it. ^ And at last, one night I had a dream wherein all was acted over again, and I saw the eerie shadows and heard the wailing wind. And I thought that a gout of blood had fallen on my hands. I went to the frozen stream and there was no water, and I strove to rub the gory stain away with bits of ice. Failing in this I sought the river and tried to wash it off. But the rush ing Rhine seemed to mock me and the spot grew brighter the more I rubbed. Then I thought I heard voices and looking up I saw rapidly approaching me my wife, with her. sad eyes bent reproachfully on mine and her un cle with stern wrath upon his f#ce. Then I hid my stained hand in my bosom, and the Dead rose up behind me and pointed at it. Such was my anguish that I awoke. The cold sweat stood in great drops upon my forehead. Every nerve in my system quivered, and I saw Marie s soft, earnest eyes looking pity ingly and wonderingly at me. " What is the matter, dear Paul, that you are so restless and talk so in your sleep ?" " Talk ! Marie !" and for one moment my horror was too deep for utterance. Perhaps I hud t- 176 THE BLOODSTONE. betrayed all in the mutterings of that fearful dream. - " What then have I said, Marie ?" " You muttered indistinctly for a while and rubbed your hands and moaned piteously, and then you cried out Franz, Franz, and awoke." " I was dreaming of hirn Marie, I saw him as you described him lying below there, in the "hall, with the blue mark upon his forehead, and his clotted hair. 0, my God !" " You are nervous," she said with inexpressi ble tenderness, -" nervous, and I fear, very ill. Try to compose yourself again to rest my hus band." And as she spoke she wjped away the chill dews from my forehead and bent down and kiss ed it. And the fresh pure lips of my darling wife seemed to bum into my brain as though they had been of steel glowing to white heat. " Oh, could I ever rest again ?" Not at his sister s side; that at least was impossible. Not to betray in my restless mid night mutterings the secret that was destro} 7 - ing me, and wlrich would blast her youth so surely. So upon the plea of illness, I told her my determination, henceforward to sleep in another room, I should have said rather to try POWER OF ONE HASTY DEED. 177 to sleep, for very little rest visited me. And often in the deep midnight or by the pale grey moon of the early morning have I seen my wife steal into my apartment and stand looking at me, weeping silently. This also grew unbearable, and bye and bye her very presence became a reproach. I locked my door at night : I shunned her in the day : her caresses were reproiches to me and I repulsed or avoided them. I never even looked at my child : for, the last time it had nestled in my arms its fondlings had pressed the Bloodstone into my flesh, and I shivered as I pushed tho wondering little one away. And then came to Marie the conviction that I had ceased to love her. Oh, what a fearful moment must that be to the young wife, the moment in which she feels assured that she has lost her husband s affection. And the roses withered and forsook her cheek } and the bright light of healthfulness faded from her beautiful eyes and the small feet stepped heavily and her song was heard no more, and the pale, thin face was bent mournfully downwards towards the earth. Yet, Heaven is my witness that I had never loved her as dearly as I did then. One song only was left, the lullaby of her child. 173 THE BLOODSTONE. Often, often have I heard it in the stillness, as its low sweet wail lulled our infant to its rest. Sleep, my hearts child, mine own" darling and prize, Drop the fringed lids o er thy dark laughing eyes. From thy fair forehead the insects I wave, And all is as tranquil and stili as the grave. Now shines thy life-sun with goldenest ray, And nought in thy future is hright-as to-day. But when thy bright heaven with care cloudeth o er, Sleep, like this, darling, will bless thee no more. Angels of glory more lovely than those, Press~ thy white eyelids and watch o er thee now; But, when they visit thy fast coming years, Twill be but to wipe from those eyelids the tears. Sleep, then, mine own one, sleep on till the dawn ! Thy mother will watch till the shadows be gone, For whether she smiles on thy cradle or weeps, Her love for thee, darling t ne er slumbers nor sleeps. By and by, that song ceased to have power : and plaintive moans, patiently uttered, were all that I heard, and the mother waxed paFer and sadder, and -old Soc and Trudchen walked softly and sighed often, and at last they told me that my child was dying. So I went and stood beside the bed, as the little sufferer slowly and painfully breathed out her soul, and when she lay dead there, I saw a blue mark upon her sinless forehead and wondered that no eye saw it save mine only. J And then I laid my little one down in the chill vaults of the old Chuich and the stone was cemented above her and her mother was alone. ;" , . *. **" XVII. > effe rmatu ONE morning I sate in my own room, resting rny chin upon my hands, and my elbows up on the window ledge, looking out upon the turbid, hurrying river and striving to fall into some such reverie as rushing waters woke in me of yore. Alas ! youth with its dreaming had gone by, more swiftly I thought, than even the tides of the Rhine. My efforts were all in vain. In the sound of the rapid waves I heard the student tramp .; over the face of the stream brooded the Presence. I felt 180 THE BLOODSTONE. the light touch of a hand upon my shoulder, and looked up and started. " Franz !" I cried. " It is I, Paul," answered the low voice of my wife, as her mournful eyes looked earnestly into mine. " Pardon me, Marie, I am very ill." " You look so, my husband, and I would not have disturbed you, but my uncle is below and wants to speak to you instantly." "Your uncle? Dr. Hoffnitz ! ~What can he want of me ? I cannot see him, Marie." " His business is of importance, he says." ." Of importance. Well, I will come. This must end sometime, why not now. Teil him, I am coming Marie, tell him I am coming." I saw the wondering look of inefiable sadness shadow the beautiful face once more, as my wife turned away and left the room. I calmed myself as well as I could and followed. Dr. Hoffnitz was walking up and down beneath the lindens, and as soon as he saw me, he came towards me. " Paul," he said, " I want you to get your hat and come with me." " Whither, Herr Doctor." " To visit one who raves incessantly about your brother Franz. I speak of Caspar Hefier- CASPAR HEFFERMAN. 181 man. You know what his course has been of late, and now his mighty frame is worn ut ; he lives on brandy alone, and cannot possibly last more than a couple of days. This morning he desired to see you, and I promised that you would come. You will do so, will you not ?" " Doctor, I cannot, I am myself suffering fear fully ; my nervous system is shattered, I could not endure the sight of Hefferman. " You will act cruelly if you refuse. How have you lived for the last three days ? "What have you eaten and drank ?" " Nothing, save bread and water." " No wonder your nerves are prostrated. Half the nervous irritation complained of is imagina tive. The seat of the imagination is the stomach. Come into the house, order a cutlet and a bottle of Asmanshansen, which I will share with you, and you will find strength to perform the duty I require of you, for a duty it is." I followed the Doctor s advice, and indeed exceeded it so far as the wine was concerned. The fear of becoming excited by the generous fluid and of disclosing the dreadful secret which tortured me, had induced me to give up the use of anything but water, and the wine was conse quently more efficient now than it would other- 16 182 THE BLOODSTONE. wise have been. It did calm the mere ner vous excitement, but the cause was beyond its reach. Dr. Hoffnitz conducted me round the walls of the town along the river side and we eniered by the old Roman gate, above which frowned the Saracen heads, all livii>g with the likeness that haunted me. After climbing the stairs, and ad vancing half the length of the ancient, narrow street, he stopped at the door of a tall, thin, yellow house, and said, " It is here that he lives." Just opposite, above a fountain was an image of the Sacred Mother with the Holy One in her arms, and a lamp before it, burnt dimly in the sunshine that filtered through the overhanging and dilapidated eaves. It was one of the poor est quarters of little antique Andernach, and as we mounted the creaking stairs, the smell of coarse food and fumes of vile tobaccoj mingled with that horrid odor peculiar to the homes of the crowded, unclean poor. Great swarthy spiders lurked in cornice angles, and centipedes crawled over the green-mould blotches on the moist walls. The stairs creaked beneath our tread, and often my foot would slip upon the unctions steps. All those things I noticed and strove to think about. CASPAR HEFFERMAN. 183 When I heard a rapping upon the tables of the beer house below, I would try to occupy my fan cy with the desires of the rapper, with his prob able condition, with his trade or dress. Any thought, no matter how trivial, bow absurd was better than the One. At length, after mounting two flights, the Doc tor stopped and knocked at a door. It was open ed by a Sister of Charity, to whom Hoffnitz whis pered something and then passed in, beckoning me to follow him. 1 did so, and saw a poor but clean apartment with one window opening on the Rhine, furnished with two or three chairs, a stain ed deal table, and a low, coarse bed. Upon the latter lay the giant frame of Caspar Heflferman. The vast limbs were shrunken and emanciated, the cheeks sunken and sallow, the black eyes burn ing with fever in the deep shadows of their sock ets, the raven hair and beard careless and wet, made the dead pallor of the face still ghastlier. When I saw that the doctor and the Sister of Mercy had quitted the room I approached the bed. His eyes rested on mine and fixed there, and so we stood, each marking earnestly what traces the Secret had left upon the other. Then a look of almost fiendish irony rose upon his fea tures as he made with bony hand the recognition 184 THE BLOODSTONE. sign of the society. I shruddered but would not make the countersign. Hefierman s eyes flashed and his withered lips writhed with the bitterness of his sneer. " So comrade," he said with his deep musical voice, " you have forgotten the countersign of our brotherhood .?" I made no answer. " And the fraternal kiss, you do not give me that ?" he continued with increased scorn, and then his mood changed suddenly, " Paul, have you also been haunted ? Have you ate and drank and slept and made merry, or has your life been like mine, a long death, or worse a long damnation. Look at me, the fever fit of young enthusiasm is past, but the vow has been always upon me. Every face I have seen has been the dead man s, every hand I have touched has felt like the bony hand of a skeleton. Now in your temple there, I see the blue bullet wound and the few drops of oozing blood. I know it is not there, yet I see it. I have not even the con solation of the lunatic who does not credit his derangement. I know that "I am mad. Give .me that drink there." As I poured out the contents of a bottle which :* * CASPAR HEFFERMAN. 185 stood upon the table near him, I saw that it was brandy, and said, " Don t drink this Hefferman, let me get you something cool and nutritive." " No, the brandy, the brandy, I live by that now, 1 should rave without it, and I want to talk with you. Fill the cup, so, up to the brim, it will not drown the dead. His eyes look up through the red liquor and glare on. me from the bottom of the cup. Tell me how you have lived." And I told him as wejl as I could, the story of my life since our accursed bond was sealed with blood, told him. how Franz had been brought home and laid in the hall with coat and vest fall en back and the bloodstone cross gleaming over his heart in the light of the candles. And as I spoke, I instinctively showed the l>adge upon my own bosom. " The cross above tbe heart," mut tered Hefferman, "it should have been Cain s mark here," and he placed his long fore finger on his forehead. When I had concluded, he said, " You have suffered more than T, for I was alone in my terror. And you have born it brave ly. Paul, I could not endure that memory, and I sought refuge in wine, and when that had lost its stupify, ing power, in brandy. Now I am dying, 186 THE BLOODSTONE. this attack of delirium is the last. So says at least the Doctor. Do I not appear sane and calm to younow ?- - * *^ I bowed my head in acquiescence. "Well, even now the fit is on me. Worse al most than the troops of fiends, and the fierce hordes of rats which I see around me in my frantic moments, worse than those is the still torture now. I hear his voice now, low and expressionless. I would to God, it had a sound of anger, or of re proach, or even of pity. But it has none such, it is cold and passionless and low, Caspar, Cas par, Caspar, it says, and never ceases, never more, never less, for hours upon weary hours till mania brings relief at last. I have heard my name called thus from dawn to dawn without one fariation or inflection, and I hear it now, now while I am talking with you, Caspar, Caspar, Caspar, Caspar, I wonder if I will hear it in the grave if I will hear it in hell." His hands crisped together and a throe of ago ny distorted his face. " Give me more brandy ! Irrepressibly shocked, I said, u Hefferman, let me send for a clergyman." " A clergyman ! for me ! Caspar Hefferman, the Atheist ! the president of the Nameless ! CASPAR HEFFERMAN. 187 "Who have lived in defiance of God, and mocking disbelief of life, hereaftpr. No whining priest for 1 me, I will be no deathbed convert to eke his cred it out withal. I will die Godless, just as I have lived. Give me the brandy, that is God enough for me." Again he emptied the cup, and bis mania began to return. " Paul," he said huskily, " I will tell you a se cret, keep it as you kept the secret of the Blood stone. I believe in that God of yours now, and in that other life, and in that Heaven where my sister is, and in that Hell whither I go I have seen it ! But I will not ask for mercy 1" Then out from his lips poured a tide of blas phemies, he writhed in his bed, the foam flew from his mouth stained with the blood that flowed from his bitten lips. His eyes glared and his black beard and hair seemed alive as the writhing mus cles moved them. I fell upon my knees; not praying, but gazing upon him. The doctor entered, and a few startled faces showed themselves at the door. But before the doctor had reached the side of the bed, the giant form was shaken as though by a convulsion, it was thrown up almost upon its feet, and then, like a crashing tree, fell down at full length, dead. 188 THE BLOODSTONE. With a new sorrow added, with a new resolu tion to preserve my silence, I went out from the dead to the living, but the Dead was with me there also. s /*> I . -* -*. NV .-. ..-, - . - . - ^bit * XVII. * "> ** an& $ui*r Jlgain. y ETTERS from Paris," said my wife. I 1 I took them abstractedly and opened them and read. One. was from my mother, and one from my sister. Both entreated me to meet them at Aix ; and I determined to do so. Since HefFernan s death I had acquired a sort of recklessness. It was my fate that I should suffer so. I had done no harm, when I joined the Nameless, and I had suffered worse agonies than the vilest criminal. I could not thouh I * * *?* 190 THE BLOODSTONE. tried I could not think God unjust; and the inability to do that produced a sort of fatalist feel ing. He has doomed me, I said to myself, He is greater than 1 ; and I must bear the doom. If I be lost, it will be because I cannot help it. I cannot change my heart and soul at will. I am not God. From this state of mind grew a sullen calm. The haunting Presence came, but I had become familiar with it now ; and soon I ceased to heed it. But, that was only another step, as I fancied, towards utterdegradation. I said philosophically that my imagination had grown dull ; that my ner vous system had become stronger. I ceased to fear meeting my wife VI had no more dread of my mother and sisters,, ])ut the affections were dulled and blunted : I cared little for any of them; they Were to me like the rest of the world. So after informing my wife of my mother s coming, I went quietly down to Aix la Chapelle. In the grand old Cathedral there, I tried to re call to memory its suggestions of heroes and heroic things, but the attempt was useless. I saw people performing this or that religious duty, and I felt that I would like to do the same, but that i by some fatality, I had lost my right to it. And MOTHER AND SISTER A.-G A i N. 191 so, the tomb of Charlemagne and the beautiful church built over it, affected me nothing. At the Hotel I was careless and indifferent : people were waiting there impatiently for friends, who had been absent a week, or maybe a month. They fretted at the delay of the coaches ; they surmised possible and impossible accidents ; they anathematized contractors, and all others connec ted with the travelling. And I, who for nearly five years, had not seen my mother nor my only sister, was as careless about their arrival as if they had been utter strangers. But they came at last. From the coach win dows they saw me long before I saw them, and my mother s arms were around my neck, and my face was resting on her heart before I had made a step from my position to meet her. For a son s heart can suffer change and grow indifferent and chill, but the flame of a mother s love is like the lamp of the Sanctuary which burns forever unex- tinguished before the Presence of God. And then Flory was to be caressed, and her thousand questions to be answered. How was Marie ? Well, I supposed. And the Baby. The baby was dead. .92 THE BLOODSTONE. And then rny mother and my sister wept for the dead child, whom they had never seen ; and its father s eyes were dry, and its father s heart was indifferent. *"- On our journey homeward, ray plea of illness and fatigue was silently acquiesced in, and my silence and rnoodiness was allowed to pass un questioned. Besides, this was the first visit of my mother and sister to the Rhine, and they had its thousand sights to watch for, its Sc/tlosser, its ruins to observe, and the legends of each to read or listen to. Then also, the vines were just grown, green upon the hillsides, and the forests were putting on the garniture of Spring, and quaint, unusual boats plying up and down, and all that constitutes sight seeing was attract ing their attention. But when the first week of their arrival had passed by, and Marie, familiar with their presence had begun to resume her mournfulness, and I shunned them as before I-had shunned her, then they grew anxious and uneasy, and I foresaw that some attempt at explanation would soon be made. Accordingly, one night a low tap at my door, announced my mother, who came in, kissed me in her usual gentle way, and motioning me back into the arm chair from which I had risen, seated MOTHER AND SISTER AGAIN. 193 herself beside me, and kept my hand in hers. " Paul, my son, I find you very much changed." " Yes, I am older now, I have ceased to be a child." " A son," she said, " never grows older for his mother; never ceases to be the same being whom she. bore upon her bosom, and cradled in her arms. You are married, and happily married." I assented. " - "Yet something, some grief or disappointment is upon you, which is destroying you, and not you only, but the gentle and beautiful young girl whom you have wedded," " Neither my wife nor I are very well, ma am, that is all. Our child is just dead." " Is it grief for its loss, that makes you shun your wife s society, and prevents you passing a - VP moment with your mother and sister ?" " That ; and other things." " "What then are these other tilings." " They are interesting only to myself, ma am." " Paul, when you left me, you still called me mama : now you do not even say mother.* " I made no reply. " Remember," she continued, " that I was your early counsellor and your confidant. You have never concealed anything from me, why hide the 17 194 THE BLOODSTONE. sorrow that oppresses you now ? God gives a sort of inspiration to mothers when they counsel their sons." " I am not a mere child now," I said sullenly. " I know that, Paul. Nor do I wish to pry into your affairs : nor to ask for any information which you have not seen proper to communicate to your wife. But it is for her that I .speak." " Ah ! has she then set you here ?" " No, she has not sent me here. Neither c#n I gain from her any knowledge even of her own sorrqws. She speaks of you only with earnest affection and tenderness. But I have been a wife and am a mother and I can see without question ing that your illness or your reserve is ruining her health. " "Why then does she herself not complain ?" " Because she could do so to no one but you, and your constant shunning of her, and irritable reserve in her presence render that impossible." " Mother," I said, " all this may as well end now. If I had anything to say, I would already have said it. But this inquisition only serves to make matters worse. Let it rest here and for ever." i& " Well my son," she answered rising, " I have done my duty, and done it, if unavailingly, yet MOTHER AND SISTER AGAIN. 195 with ^ove for you. I will intrude upon the pri vacy which you demand no more. But remem ber what I have said about your wife. If you do not change your manner to her, you will destroy her. The promises which you made when woo ing her were made upon your honpr as a gentle man. And you, if you continue your present course of conduct will send her, her whom you swore before God s Altar, by the most solemn ^ and holiest vow that man can make, to cherish and honor and protect and love, you will send her in utter mournfulness and brokenness of heart down to her grave." My mother kissed me with the same gentleness ^as when she entered and then left the room. Wooing with the pledges ~of a gentleaian s honor; " swearing by the most solemn and holiest vow that man can make." I had forgotten these. The blind slave of one vow, I was Jiving in deliber ate careless habitual violation of another. What then had to be done ? Having forgotten one oath was no justification for forgetting another. The kindness and attention due to my wife, could not break my bond to the Nameless. /^* But then, I thought, wliy should these conflict with each other; I will be kind and loving t6* Marie ; that at least I may do, without forgetting 196 THE BLOODSTONE. my pledge. But the presence ! How to get rid of that ! How ccHild I look at her and not see her brother ? And my restlessness, and sleep- talking, my unguarded moments and the dreams which might reveal all. Alas, what was I to do. A piazza was erected around three sides of our house, a portion of it opening from the drawing- room being furnished with glass shutters on the outside so as to form a small conservatory. This year most of the plants had been taken out, but the shutters were not yet - removed ; and, when I thought T could do so unobserved, I went down there and threw mysejf upon a long bench at tached to the house wall and strove to reduce my poor thoughts to some form and order. And as I lay thus, a window was thrown open just over my head, and I heard voices from the drawing- room. They were those of my mother and the Doctor. They Were talking of me. " Pardon me madam," said the Doctor, " but have any members of your family or that of your husband, so far back as you know, exhibited symp toms of mental derangement." " No sir, none," my mother answered, " Paul s father had fits of melancholy of a light nature, of tener than colder men : but I have observed that all of a passionate, impulsive nature are subject MOTHER AND SISTER AGAIN. 197 to such, and are easily soothed out of them by womanly care, .or even without that, they are of short duration." " Yes ; I did not know but that Paul s oddity might be referred to derangement." " Oh, Doctor !" . " Temporary derangement, gnadiges frau, mere ly temporary." " But he has never shown any violence Doctor." " Oh, that is no sign. There is a calm madness. Religious madness for instance, is almost always quiet and sad, which I think you say is the case with your son." "Yes, but it cannot be that, for he who was once so pious, so cheerfully fond of his religious duties ; now neglects them altogether. Besides which, he manifests no uneasiness whatever when the sub ject is introduced. Oh, sir, it cannot be mania." " Well, madam, I will try to be with him more. I will watch him closely. It may be but a dis eased imagination, and that can be reached through the stomach. Meantime I will keep a close eye upon him." The voices were silent ; both speakers quitted the drawing-room, and I lay there striving to see a glimpse of light somewhere to guide me. All my first terror had been renewed by that one ex 198 THE BLOODSTONE. pression : " I will watch him closely." It was Dr. Hoffnitz who said this. A man with stern un flinching will, who had sworn to avenge the death of his beloved nephew. Now at last all must come out ; the fearful secret could be concealed no longer. What ! what should I do ! I thought, until my brain reeled. I planned and counter- planned, resolved and changed my resolutions, until mental prostration produced physical fatigue and I fell asleep upon the hard bench, there in the conservatory. - How long I lay I did not know, but- when 1 awoke, all was still. My watuh had run down, but I knew it was past midnight. I shook with. cold and iny head ached violently. Silently I crept to my room, and went to bed/"but not to sleep; my temples beat ^fitfully, and when the chill passed off it was succeeded by violent fever. In the morning I was very ill, and old Soc, when he carne in, was desirous of calling the Doctor. This I sternly forbade him to do : but directed him to say that I wished for strict retirement for a few days. I made him promise not to leave me unless when I told him, and to refuse admis sion to asy one if I were asleep or delirious. I knew that if I should rave, it would be in Ger man, and I had no fLar of him. MOTHER AND SISTER AGAIN. 199 And there he watched, faithful, enduring old fellow, day after day and night after night, ten derly, and unvveariedly. Although utterly unac customed to think of any command of mine, ex cept how to obey it most quickly, thi isolation struck even his obedient sense as Wrong, aud I have more than once heard him mutter, "Why little. Massa Pol dont see um mudder ? he too young for lay there all alone. Suppose he done gone dead, what Missus say to ole Soc den ?" Such soliloquies would be followed sometimes by a low chuckle of satisfaction, which I could not at all understand : but I afterwards discovered that whenever I fell into a deep, and tranquil sleep, the old fellow would let .in my wife or mother or Flory to look at me, and see how I was. So then for three weeks I kept my bed, violently ill but without delirium. My body was wasted to a mere living skeleton, I had never befove been so uttej-ly enfeebled, and this complete physical pro stration relieved my over wrought brain. The awful Presence of the dead censed to attend me. I thought much and often of poor Franz, but ho haunted me no longer, and when my disease broke and I began to recover, rny mind was more tranquil than it ha.d ever been, since the gubty midnight at Braunsbarg. XIX. fast f rial, ONE morning I awakened and found myself lying alone and oppressed with thirst ; rny faithful attendant had I suppose gone to replenibh my carafFe of water and to renew the other bevera ges which 1 used. I determined to rise, as much to test my strength as to procure a drink. So I got out of bed, slipped on my pantaloons and dress ing gown and went out of the room and alon the passage. But I had overrated my powers, found myself suddenly fainting and turned to re trace my steps. My strength however was gone, I had already begun to reel when I perceived an T H E L A a T TRIAL. 20 1 open dnnr. I recognized my wife s room and saw a sofa within it. I had no time for thought, bu* instinctively staggered towards it, fell upon i f and fainted outright. I cannot tell how long the swoon continued, but when. I opened my eyes my wife was bathing my temples. In a few moments I was better, and with her help I raised myself into an upright position. She had unbuttoned the collar of my shirt to give me air, and as I sat up, out from my bosom on its silken cord swung^ the cross of Bloodstone and hung there exposed upon my breast. Never will I forget the look of loving tender ness which my wife wore as she helped me into an upright position. Never will I forget the change : the look of unutterable, of palsied horror, with which, her hands clenched together and her eyes dilated, she stared at the badge of the Nameless. Of all the agonies which I had endured, none had been so great as this. There I sat with trembling frame and terrified * eyes fixed upon hers, marking her frozen stare of anguish and the crisping of her fingers until my soul shrunk in abject fear. I bore this for -one instant an instant long as 202 THE BLOODS TO N E . eternity rand then I rose and moved towards the door, and a maniac expression disfigured her face, and she sprang at me Jike a tiger and clutched me by the throat. And I shook, powerless in the gripe of that delicate woman, and loud and clear, I thought it might have waked the dead loud and clear she shrieked, " Help ! help ! the murdered I" " Marie ! for our dear Lord s sake !" and I strov6 to break from her. but she clung to me with fearful strength, till I could feel her fingers sinking into my throat. ^ " Help ! help ! the murderer !" " 1 am not,. Marie, hear me. \ " Help ! Help !" " Will you destroy your husband ?" I said. She tore the wedding ring from her finger, threw it upon the floor clutched me again and shrieked anew, fiercely, " Help ! Help ! the murderer !" I heard hurried footsteps approaching. I plead, " Oh ! Marie, for our child s sake, for our little dead child s sake." And the memory of her child, sank into the mother s heart, and with one look of utter abhor rence, her head fell back and her face grew white * T H K L A S T T HI A L . 203 as death. I caught her in my arms, but, with tho supple -strength of a snake, she writhed her self free and fell back senseless upon the floor. I pinked up the wedding ring and fled in horror to rny own room. I heard the noise of people -passing rapidly to and fro, the calling of servants and ringing of bells. I could distinguish the Doctor s heavy tread and the clumsy footsteps of poor unhandy Trudchen: but I moved not from my bed into which I had crept, but awaited patiently until they should come to seize me. And the long day passed on, only broken by two short visits from Soc ; and the longer niglit passed on, interrupted by period ical footsteps and whisperings in the passage. The gray dawn followed, and the sunrise and the full blaze of morning, and then about nine o clock iriy mother came in and told me that Marie was stricken down by a brain fever. In a day or two, I was well enough to go out ; and an irrepressible curiosity drew me to her room. Day after day, I sat there-, listening for hours to her ravings. She seemed. to have for gotten her season of blight, those bitter mournful months which she had just gone through. She talked of her early -marriage days; of her brother, of her child, above all of me. Oh, how earnestly 204 T ri, E B i, o o r> s T o N r. . she would entreat that I might be sent for ; that I would conj to her; that I would only come and speak to her. And when I would go, she would look at me unrecognizingly "for a while, and then with a shudder would turn away, to preserve a silence of some minutes and then to relapse again into delirium. It was ten days before she was pronounced out of danger, during which time I was recovering slowly, although I still remained very feeble. The first sign of her return to sanity was her ceasing to call upon me, and after her convales cence had begun, I dared to face her only once. And then the terrified abhorrence of her look drove me back to my solitude. My mood was entirely changed. I was gentle and sad, when alone I wept frequently at the utter wreck of my life and prospects, and night after night I would lie awake, thinking mournful ly of my desolation and hopelessness. Once as I lay thus, a day or two after Marie had been declared convalescent, if she did not fall into a decline, I reviewed my last winter. I was thinking of that terrible midnight ride, and was recalling the look of the lurid furnace fires, when I thought I beheld one at the end of my chamber. I started and rubbed my eyes, but * . * THE LAST TRIAL. 205 there undoubtedly was the red, bright streak. I looked another way and went on., with iriy rev erie; but the first time I turned, there again was the light. Once more I disregarded it and once more, after a few moments, I looked again and. saw it 4 redder, broader, more lurid than ever. Tlu>n F resolved to see what it was, and left rny bed for that purpose, "but before I could reach the door, there arose sounds of running and slam- ming, and loud and fearful came pealing through - * m the midnight, the cry of " Fire I" I hurried on some articles of clothing, and opened the door, the corridor was already in flames, and I dashed through them towards my wife s room. Before I reached it, Trudchen burst out of -it with something in her arms. " Your Mistress Trudchen." " Here, Herr, God be thanked." and crash down tliB blazing staircase she rushed. I followed her at all risks and reached the foot of the stairs in safety. * Blinded and half suffocated I paused for a mo ment to collect myself. I stood upon an island as it were, of unconsumed floor. Behind me the staircase was crackling ; on each side was the wall of the entry, before me all was flames and masses 206 THE BLOODSTONE. of charred wood and cinders dropping from above. My strength gave way, I uttered a prayer and sank down. ""ft And thea^the flames before me were parted as water is parted, and with sleeves and hair on fire, spotted with burning flakes, yet strong and irre- eistable as a giant, my faithful negro bounded to my side. He caught me up in his strong arms : swept his broad right hand across his eyes, and leaped into the horror from which he had em erged. He paused at the door.way for an instant, and I saw a crowd upon the lawn who shouted as he appeared. The fire seemed to have crept along % the beams under floor and ceiling, and to have burst out in several places at once. Now here, the beams of the porch had been consumed and the floor had fallen in, and the heavy rafters of the old fashioned roof over head were all on fire. This I saw as he sprang with me, below. Two more strides and we are safe, but before even one can be taken, crash fall the huge posts meet Ifc ing each other, and they bar our way. I look up to see a huge rafter with one end consumed, shak ing above us. Soc too, looks up and sees it. One glance is enough. He presses me down amid the *. 207 trampled brands, and bending above me, arches his strong back and braces his powerful arms to guard me, and crash, crash swoops down the im pending timber and the brave arms snap beneath the blow. Is it all over ? Not yet, once more the grand Did inun collects the remnants of his enormous strength : love lends his brawny muscles double power ; he rises with the effort of a Titan, he lifts upon his massive shoulders the heavy burning beam and with one last and mightiest heave, he thrusts it far from rne, and falls backward upon it as it lumbers to the ground. " My brave, my noble, devoted Soc," I cry, bursting into tears, and springing to my feet. " You are killed for me." His lips murmur something indistinguishable : his loving eyes rest upon mine : a smile of in expressible beauty illumes his swart features for a moment ; and then with one shudder he lies there dead. Then followed a confused recollection of the dashing of water, the cries of men and women and I know nothing more. When I returned to sense, I was lying upon the sward, the house was still blazing fiercely, the body of my heroic servant lay, covered with a , * %, ? THE BLOODSTONE. cloth, quite near me : and kneeling and crying over rne was the poor unhandy Trudchen. " Where is Marie ?" I asked. " There in the Herr Eustace s house." A new soul seemed to be within me. Terribly burned as I was, I felt not the pain ; but h.urried over the two lawns which joined each other and through the open portal of my neighbor s house, " Where is my wife ?" " There in that room : I wil go with you." " No, I must be alone with her." I entered the room, locked the door and saw my Marie, white and still, lying upon a sofa. I sprang across the room, fell upon my knees be side her, and clasped my arms round her. She tried to push me away, but I only clasped her more firmly. " Hear me, my wife, your suspicions were all false. There is no stain of fratricide on me. Lis ten to me mvhe own one, my beloved, my darling Marie, and I will tell you all." And there in that position I poured forth all the history of my anguish. 1 laid bare all my soul. I told her, how I had fought for Franz ; how I had striven to save him in vain. I told her of my early life-, my self deception, my tnonoma- THELASTTRIAL. 209 nia, my long bitter agonies until now that God had given light and calm unto my soul. And she listened, and forgiving me all the woe I had caused her, wept heavily for mine. Then with my burnt fingers, out of my burnt bosom where I had worn it, I took our wedding ring and placed it on her white emaciate finger. The shadow had passed away from between us, and loving heart looked clearly, into loving heart, by the light that poured on us from the Throne of the merciful God. XX. r Ittsi0n. MY story is nearly done. At my mother s urgent entreaties We determined not to re build our house, but to return to America with Marie. The good old Doctor unselfishly persuaded his niece into acquiescence, and the promise of a speedy visit made her cheerful. All our plans were nearly shipwrecked by the unexpected and violent opposition of the unhandy Trudchen, who bohaved in the most extraordina ry manner. * CONCLUSION. 211 " We were mad, she said, to think of taking a poor little child like that, pointing to Marie, among black men and beasts, to a wild country where they had no porcelain stoves and could not speak a syllable of good German." I suggested that the Americans were not all quite black, but she flouted me at once. Did nt she know ? " Jt was easy for people who wanted to take other people s friends away, to pretend to forget that other people were not entirely ignorant. Was not that brave old Soc, (and her apron went up to her eyes), he who was lying burnt almost to cinders but cold enough now in the church there, wasn t he an American ? 1 ^ and was not he black ?" I granted that, but instanced my mother and sister. I mentioned them, Trudchen said, merely to annoy her ; and I knew a deal better. But, and she put on her most wheedling manner, could I not just leave the poor little wife with her ? She would take good care of her, and keep her safely till I came back. When even this slight favor was refused, Trud- ciicti became outrageous. She hinted that I was : kidnapper who took people s children away from i.,oui : she plead and scolded, and finally deolur- ; * * . ,$* 212 THE BLOODSTONE. ed that I had no heart, and that I was taking advantage of her because she was an orphan. And then the great unhandy warm hearted creature sat down and blubbered outright. But when she was told that she should be dowered with enough to commence a Gasthaus and should wed and be happy with her blessed Peter ; she became consoled, and said that I .had always been a father to her. So she went on until we left, breaking all the glass and crockery she could lay her hands on, alternatively scolding and cajoling, and exciting inexhaustible merri ment in Florry by always addressing our mother as " my child," and by calling me " Papa." And now she and her Peter are one flesh, and they keep the Gasthaus zuni Goldenen Anker near the steamboat wharf at Andernach. Soc lies buried near Franz and my child, and on the tablet which records his name and age and faithful services, I caused inscribed as epitaph, this verse from the Canticles *. * - JLobe is Slvonfl as It was early in the Summer, when we started down the Ehine for our far Western Home, and as the swift vessel swept out into the stream, and CONCLUSION. 213 I saw the ruin of Braunsberg fading, grey in the distance, I dropped the cross of Bloodstone into the ru.shing waters, and the rushing waters closed over it forever. About a year after our arrival a letter from Dr. Hoffnitz communicated intelligence of the ex ecution of Heyne for assassination at Berlin. He confessed to having shot Franz with his own hand, but mentioned no word of the Nameless. And now if the reader have still any interest in me, he may learn in the next page where I arn now. I am at home, never to reside out of it again, in the fresh, young land of America. My pleas ant house stands upon one of those delicate penin sulas that jut from the north shore of Long Island out into the Sound. There every breeze blows new health and every glance discovers a new beauty. From my own windows I look out upon five miles of gleaming bay framed by two beetling headlands, whereof one bears a tall lighthouse, and between them over sixteen miles of Strait I can see the sunshine brightening the white churches and homesteads of Connecticut. Within thoso 214 THE BLOODSTONE. headlands at the right, the broad waters flow away inte invisibility, and to the left again they farm a forest circled harbor where white winged yachts are wont to sleep. There up the western side of our own peninsula the tides bound through a narrow inlet and form two beautiful lakes, and far at the end of the upper one a tall white church spire watches the waters like a hungry stork "or crane. lieyond. these harbors are new necks, new bays: woody headlands; eoves of wondrous ^\f Jbeauty, lustrous in their setting of green forest and. suggestive of peaceful thought, of health and .fV calm retirement and rest. Here I dwell happilj with my mother and wife. Florry is married and lives near us. We have four children now, Marie and Paul and Franz and our other little Marie who is in Heaven. It is about six months since Dr. Hoffnitz died and I was called to Andernach to settle his estate. Here, in sight of all the scenes described, I have passed my leisure in writing this record of my life, with the hope that I do not write all uselessly. I am a wiser man for the sufferings I have endu red. I can say, with the authority of experience, that the first influence needed over man is that of Keligion ; and that religion furnishes him with all CONCLUSION. 215 the mutual love and power to aid and feeling of fraternity that hfi ean need. He is not formed to bind himself by secret ties and unblest vows to any portion of his race. God made him for us all. Made him to live by mutual ties and love recip rocal : to receive the affection and trust of all around us and to give our own in payment; to show an honest face in the broad light : to have an open heart for man and for man s Maker : to shun all hidden deeds and bonds of mystery, the fruit whereof is wild remorse and isolation and cold distrust and ultimate destruction. To be human is our duty : to be human, that so we may grow divine ; to live in brotherhood with all men here, hoping for a son s place at the Father s Board. THE END. * ^jEttfr * <- 5w -.** 18927 A 000 984 230 3