"Now you have indeed preserved yourself from temptation!" cried Correntian, as Donatus dropped his fettered hands without a sound of lamentation pa.s.sing his lips. "Martyr! open the eyes of your soul, the crown is hanging above your head!"
Donatus fell on his knees before the terrible monk and folding his weary, iron-bound hands as if in prayer, he exclaimed, "Now, now, I understand you."
"Donatus!" cried Correntian, as if his lifelong torpor was suddenly unpent in a lava-flood of extasy--his eye flashed, his pulses throbbed, his breast heaved--"At one word from me you would have been exempt from this fearful punishment--and I was silent. Donatus, tell me, have I been your salvation or your ruin?"
"My salvation and I thank you!" groaned Donatus, and a terrible smile of bliss pa.s.sed over his drawn lips; he feebly grasped Correntian"s hands; the damp walls, like an open grave, echoed back his words: "I thank you."
Correntian hastily threw his arms round the unconscious boy as he sank to the ground; for the first time in his life a human form rested on his breast, and with the first rays of morning, which fell on him through the slit in the wall, high above him, the first ray of love sparkled in the stern master"s eyes and was merged in the martyr"s crown that shone on the disciple"s head.
BOOK III.
GRACE.
CHAPTER I.
Morning dawned slowly over the heath of Mals and the dismal tolling of the bell of Saint Valentine"s proclaimed far and wide that one of the brethren lay at the point of death. It was brother Florentinus, the grey-haired watchman, who for more than half a century had lived in constant warfare with the deadly and inhospitable powers of the moor, and whose tender and protecting hand had s.n.a.t.c.hed from them their storm-beaten victims. How old he was no man knew--but it must be near on a century; yet Death found it no easy task to crush the life that had defied a thousand snowstorms. He lay close to the chimney, breathing painfully, his dim eyes fixed on the dingy painting of Saint Valentine. His withered body was like a dried up mummy, his hands and feet were already stiff and cold, but his hardly-drawn breath still fanned the trembling flame. It seemed as though he were waiting for something; and yet what should he be waiting for? He had closed his account with the world.
The lonely rider was scouring across the moor from Burgeis at the maddest pace to which he could urge his horse. He too heard the knell, and without accounting to himself for the impulse, he struck his spurs into the horse that started forward with great leaps--he felt that he _must_ reach the Hospice before the tolling ceased; before the unknown life was extinct that was in that hour wrestling with death.
The dying man listened to the beating of the hoofs and turned his eyes to the door.
"He is come," he said in a faint, hollow voice.
"Who?" asked the brethren who knelt round him in prayer.
At this instant there was a violent knocking at the door; the old man raised himself with a wonderful exertion of strength.
"Open quickly," he said. The astonished brethren obeyed him, and in walked the rider clanking and clattering, straight up to the dying man; it was in vain that the brethren signed to him to be silent and not to disturb the dying man"s rest.
"You are old enough--maybe you are he!" cried the Count roughly, and he threw himself on a stool by the old man"s couch. "You must not die--you must speak with me."
The old man bowed his trembling head. "It is well, it is well," he muttered feebly, "I have thought of him a great deal--and it was a sin.
We meant it well--but we all must err."
"Do you know me?" asked the knight in astonishment.
"Aye, aye--you will find him again--I know, I know." The Count began to be frightened at the old man.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"She has appeared to me twice--again this very night and announced to me that you would come to fetch him."
"She--who?" asked the Count with increasing emotion.
"She, the Countess--the angel of Ramuss."
"Do not make him talk," said one of the brethren, coming up to the Count. "What good can the wanderings of a dying man do you?"
"Silence!" thundered the Count so loud that the sick man started, "Let him speak or I will make you all dumb for the rest of your days."
The brethren stood helpless and consulting each other in whispers.
"Did you know the Lady of Reichenberg?" asked the Count, bending over Florentinus.
"Did I know her--Why she lay here, where I am lying--she and the baby-boy."
"The boy?" repeated the knight, and his heart laboured sorely; but he controlled himself to listen to the sick man, whose breathing grew weaker and weaker, that he might hear the words he might speak before it had altogether ceased. "The boy--where have you put him?"
"Up there--at Marienberg--they kept him--but the mother has given me no peace--three times has she come to me and said, "Give him his son again"--"
The last words grew fainter--the Count felt as if his head would burst with its throbbing. He bowed his ear over the dying lips, they still moved mechanically--
"Do not die--do not die," he implored him in anxious expectation--"Only say his name--the name they gave the boy in the convent--"
The dying man"s lips moved and muttered as though to say "Do--" but he could no more, his breath failed him. The Count took him in his arms and raised his head--he would not let him die--he must p.r.o.nounce that name on which all depended.
"Don--Don--" he stammered, and his very pulses stood still while listened.
"--nat--" murmured Florentinus with a last effort.
"Donatus!" cried the Count, no longer master of himself.
The dying man bowed a.s.sent--a peaceful smile overspread his face and his head fell back--no more now than a n.o.ble marble image.
The Count"s blood boiled as he looked at the peaceful corpse; it mounted to his forehead and hands till his veins stood out like cords, and his eyes were ominously blood-shot.
The brethren were in the utmost terror. "He was talking nonsense, my Lord, do not believe what he said, he had long been childish." But it was of no use. The Count, without vouchsafing them a glance, walked straight out of the house, flung himself on horseback and rode madly off, the blood trickling from the flanks of his tired beast--towards Marienberg.
"Oh! luckless day!" cried the Abbot, when the brethren who had gone to seek Eusebius brought down his dead body from the western tower.
"Oh! luckless day!" was echoed by the brethren, who from the upper hall had seen a rider spring from a horse which fell down dead at the door.
It was Count Reichenberg. Grim rage sat on his brow, grim rage had ridden the n.o.ble horse to death, grim rage flapped her angry wings above his head as he knocked at the door with the hilt of his sword.
"Open, in the name of G.o.d!" said the Abbot; he divined what it was that hung over him and that nothing now could avert.
He stood in the middle of the still convent-yard, immovable as a statue, and the brethren gathered round him as round the pillar which upheld them all.
The Count walked silently up to him, his white lips trembling with such violent agitation that he had to control himself before he could speak.
The Abbot quietly awaited what he might say, while the Count included him and the whole circle of monks in one glance of hatred, for which his tongue could find no adequate expression. At last he muttered between his teeth,