CHAPTER IITHE EYRIE
CHRISTINA SOREL awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont tomeet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the gabledfront of her uncle’s house. It was a time when the imperial free townsof Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in civilization,and had reached a point whence they retrograded grievously during theThirty Years’ War, even to an extent that they have never entirelyrecovered. The country immediately around them shared the benefits oftheir civilization, and the free peasant-proprietors lived in great easeand prosperity, in beautiful and picturesque farmsteads, enjoying acareless abundance, and keeping numerous rural or religious feasts, whereold Teutonic mythological observances had received a Christian colouringand adaptation.
In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very different.The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent change of dynasty,the many disputed successions, had combined to render the sovereignauthority uncertain and feeble, and it was seldom really felt save in thehereditary dominions of the Kaiser for the time being. Thus, while thecities advanced in the power of self-government, and the education itconveyed, the nobles, especially those whose abodes were not easilyaccessible, were often practically under no government at all, and feltthemselves accountable to no man. The old wild freedom of the Suevi, andother Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically,existed. The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, hadindeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and hadreceived rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were hisjudges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding commissionsfrom, and being thus dependent on, the court. But the Freiherren, a wordvery inadequately represented by our French term of baron, wereabsolutely free, “never in bondage to any man,” holding their own, andowing no duty, no office; poorer, because unendowed by the royalauthority, but holding themselves infinitely higher, than the pensionersof the court. Left behind, however, by their neighbours, who did theirpart by society, and advanced with it, the Freiherren had been for themost part obliged to give up their independence and fall into the system,but so far in the rear, that they ranked, like the barons of France andEngland, as the last order of nobility.
Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the country,some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren lingered,their hand against every man, every man’s hand against them, and everbecoming more savage, both positively and still more proportionately, astheir isolation and the general progress around them became greater. TheHouse of Austria, by gradually absorbing hereditary states into its ownpossessions, was, however, in the fifteenth century, acquiring apreponderance that rendered its possession of the imperial throne almosta matter of inheritance, and moreover rendered the supreme power far moreeffective than it had ever previously been. Freidrich III. a man stillin full vigour, and with an able and enterprising son already elected tothe succession, was making his rule felt, and it was fast becomingapparent that the days of the independent baronies were numbered, andthat the only choice that would soon be left them would be between makingterms and being forcibly reduced. Von Adlerstein was one of the oldestof these free families. If the lords of the Eagle’s Stone had everfollowed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their imperialdays, their descendants had taken care to forget the weakness, andbelieved themselves absolutely free from all allegiance.
And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected from theirhostility to all outward influences. The hostel, if it deserved thename, was little more than a charcoal-burner’s hut, hidden in the woodsat the foot of the mountain, serving as a halting-place for theFreiherren’s retainers ere they attempted the ascent. The inhabitantswere allowed to ply their trade of charring wood in the forest oncondition of supplying the castle with charcoal, and of affording alodging to the followers on occasions like the present.
Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes gleaming out ofhis black face, Jobst the Kohler startled Christina terribly when shecame into the outer room, and met him returning from his night’s work,with his long stoking-pole in his hand. Her father shouted with laughterat her alarm.
“Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and dwarfs, my girl!Never mind, thou wilt see worse than honest Jobst before thou hast done.Now, eat a morsel and be ready—mountain air will make thee hungry erethou art at the castle. And, hark thee, Jobst, thou must givestable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let some of mydaughter’s gear lie in the shed.”
“O father!” exclaimed Christina, in dismay.
“We’ll bring it up, child, by piecemeal,” he said in a low voice, “as wecan; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady would haveher claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see thereof.Moreover, I shall have enough to do to look after thee up the ascent,without another of these city-bred beasts.”
“I hope the poor mule will be well cared for. I can pay for—” beganChristina; but her father squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft voice inhis loud tones.
“Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to me. Woe betide him,if I find it the worse!”—and his added imprecations seemed unnecessary,so earnest were the asseverations of both the man and his wife that theanimal should be well cared for.
“Look you, Christina,” said Hugh Sorel, as soon as he had placed her onher mule, and led her out of hearing, “if thou hast any gold about thee,let it be the last thing thou ownest to any living creature up there.”Then, as she was about to speak—“Do not even tell me. I _will_ notknow.” The caution did not add much to Christina’s comfort; but shepresently asked, “Where is thy steed, father?”
“I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and Yellow Lorentz,”answered the father. “I shall have ado enough on foot with thee beforewe are up the Ladder.”
The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark paththrough oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grewstunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony,torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to Christina’seyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side like a snail or afly. She quite gasped for breath at the very sight, and was told inreturn to wait and see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, orEagle’s Ladder. Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic scenery;she knew that jagged peaks made very pretty backgrounds in illuminations,but she had much rather have been in the smooth meadows of the environsof Ulm. The Danube looked much more agreeable to her, silver-windingbetween its green banks, than did the same waters leaping down with noisyvoices in their stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew inhis grave breadth and majesty. Yet, alarmed as she was, there wassomething in the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain air thatgave her an entirely new sensation of enjoyment and life, and seemed tobrace her limbs and spirits for whatever might be before her; and,willing to show herself ready to be gratified, she observed on thefreshness and sweetness of the air.
“Thou find’st it out, child? Ay, ’tis worth all the feather-beds andpouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it not? That accursed Italian fever never leftme till I came up here. A man can scarce draw breath in your foggymeadows below there. Now then, here is the view open. What think you ofthe Eagle’s Nest?”
For, having passed beyond the region of wood they had come forth upon themountain-side. A not immoderately steep slope of boggy, mossy-lookingground covered with bilberries, cranberries, &c. and with bare rocks hereand there rising, went away above out of her ken; but the path she wasupon turned round the shoulder of the mountain, and to the left, on aledge of rock cut off apparently on their side by a deep ravine, and witha sheer precipice above and below it, stood a red stone pile, with oneturret far above the rest.
“And this is Schloss Adlerstein?” she exclaimed.
“That is Schloss Adlerstein; and there shalt thou be in two hours’ time,unless the de
vil be more than usually busy, or thou mak’st a fool ofthyself. If so, not Satan himself could save thee.”
It was well that Christina had resolution to prevent her making a fool ofherself on the spot, for the thought of the pathway turned her so dizzythat she could only shut her eyes, trusting that her father did not seeher terror. Soon the turn round to the side of the mountain was made,and the road became a mere track worn out on the turf on the hillside,with an abyss beneath, close to the edge of which the mule, of course,walked.
When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine was likean enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream thatformed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it. The ravineitself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing shallower as itascended higher; but here, where Christina beheld it, it was extremelydeep, and savagely desolate and bare. She now saw that the Eagle’sLadder was a succession of bare gigantic terraces of rock, of which theopposite side of the ravine was composed, and on one of which stood thecastle. It was no small mystery to her how it had ever been built, orhow she was ever to get there. She saw in the opening of the ravine thegreen meadows and woods far below; and, when her father pointed out toher the Debateable Ford, apparently much nearer to the castle than theythemselves were at present, she asked why they had so far overpassed thecastle, and come by this circuitous course.
“Because,” said Hugh, “we are not eagles outright. Seest thou not, justbeyond the castle court, this whole crag of ours breaks off short, fallslike the town wall straight down into the plain? Even this cleft that weare crossing by, the only road a horse can pass, breaks off short andsudden too, so that the river is obliged to take leaps which nought elsebut a chamois could compass. A footpath there is, and Freiherr Eberhardtakes it at all times, being born to it; but even I am too stiff for thelike. Ha! ha! Thy uncle may talk of the Kaiser and his League, but hewould change his note if we had him here.”
“Yet castles have been taken by hunger,” said Christina.
“What, knowest thou so much?—True! But look you,” pointing to a whitefoamy thread that descended the opposite steeps, “yonder beck dashesthrough the castle court, and it never dries; and see you the ledge thecastle stands on? It winds on out of your sight, and forms a path whichleads to the village of Adlerstein, out on the other slope of themountains; and ill were it for the serfs if they victualled not thecastle well.”
The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all Christina’s attention.The road, or rather stairs, came down to the stream at the bottom of thefissure, and then went again on the other side up still more tremendoussteeps, which Hugh climbed with a staff, sometimes with his hand on thebridle, but more often only keeping a watchful eye on the sure-footedmule, and an arm to steady his daughter in the saddle when she grewabsolutely faint with giddiness at the abyss around her. She was toomuch in awe of him to utter cry or complaint, and, when he saw her effortto subdue her mortal terror, he was far from unkind, and let her feel hisprotecting strength.
Presently a voice was heard above—“What, Sorel, hast brought her!Trudchen is wearying for her.”
The words were in the most boorish dialect and pronunciation, thestranger to Christina’s ears, because intercourse with foreign merchants,and a growing affectation of Latinism, had much refined the city languageto which she was accustomed; and she was surprised to perceive by herfather’s gesture and address that the speaker must be one of the lords ofthe castle. She looked up, and saw on the pathway above her a tall,large-framed young man, his skin dyed red with sun and wind, in oddcontrast with his pale shaggy hair, moustache, and beard, as though theweather had tanned the one and bleached the other. His dress was a stillshabbier buff suit than her father had worn, but with arichly-embroidered belt sustaining a hunting-horn with finely-chasedornaments of tarnished silver, and an eagle’s plume was fastened into hiscap with a large gold Italian coin. He stared hard at the maiden, butvouchsafed her no token of greeting—only distressed her considerably bydistracting her father’s attention from her mule by his questions aboutthe journey, all in the same rude, coarse tone and phraseology. Someamount of illusion was dispelled. Christina was quite prepared to findthe mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the graces ofcourtesy and high birth; but, though there was certainly an air ofcommand and freedom of bearing about the present specimen, his mannersand speech were more uncouth than those of any newly-caught apprentice ofher uncle, and she could not help thinking that her good aunt Johannaneed not have troubled herself about the danger of her taking a liking toany such young Freiherr as she here beheld.
By this time a last effort of the mule had climbed to the level of thecastle. As her father had shown her, there was precipice on two sides ofthe building; on the third, a sheer wall of rock going up to a hugeheight before it reached another of the Eagle’s Steps; and on the fourth,where the gateway was, the little beck had been made to flow in a deepchannel that had been hollowed out to serve as a moat, before it boundeddown to swell the larger water-course in the ravine. A temporary bridgehad been laid across; the drawbridge was out of order, and part of Hugh’sbusiness had been to procure materials for mending its apparatus.Christina was told to dismount and cross on foot. The unrailed board, soclose to the abyss, and with the wild water foaming above and below, wasdreadful to her; and, though she durst not speak, she hung back with aninvoluntary shudder, as her father, occupied with the mule, did not thinkof giving her a hand. The young baron burst out into an unrestrainedlaugh—a still greater shock to her feelings; but at the same time heroughly took her hand, and almost dragged her across, saying, “Citybred—ho, ho!” “Thanks, sir,” she strove to say, but she was very nearweeping with the terror and strangeness of all around.
The low-browed gateway, barely high enough to admit a man on horseback,opened before her, almost to her feelings like the gate of the grave, andshe could not help crossing herself, with a silent prayer for protection,as she stepped under it, and came into the castle court—not such a courtas gave its name to fair courtesy, but, if truth must be told, far moreresembling an ill-kept, ill-savoured stable-yard, with the piggeriesopening into it. In unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein, orlittle tailor, _i.e._ the biggest and fiercest of all the knappen, wasgrooming Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged, frightful swine weregrubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five gaunt ferocious-looking dogscame bounding up to greet their comrade Festhold; and a great oldlong-bearded goat stood on the top of the mixen, looking much disposed tobutt at any newcomer. The Sorel family had brought cleanliness fromFlanders, and Hausfrau Johanna was scrupulously dainty in all herappointments. Christina scarcely knew how she conveyed herself and herblue kirtle across the bemired stones to the next and still darkerportal, under which a wide but rough ill-hewn stair ascended. Thestables, in fact, occupied the lower floor of the main building, and nottill these stairs had ascended above them did they lead out into thecastle hall. Here were voices—voices rude and harsh, like thoseChristina had shrunk from in passing drinking booths. There was a longtable, with rough men-at-arms lounging about, and staring rudely at her;and at the upper end, by a great open chimney, sat, half-dozing, anelderly man, more rugged in feature than his son; and yet, when he rousedhimself and spoke to Hugh, there was a shade more of breeding, and lessof clownishness in his voice and deportment, as if he had been lessentirely devoid of training. A tall darkly-robed woman stood besidehim—it was her harsh tone of reproof and command that had so startledChristina as she entered—and her huge towering cap made her look giganticin the dim light of the smoky hall. Her features had been handsome, buthad become hardened into a grim wooden aspect; and with sinking spiritsChristina paused at the step of the daïs, and made her reverence, wishingshe could sink beneath the stones of the pavement out of sight of theseterrible personages.
“So that’s the wench you have taken all this trouble for,” wasFreiherrinn Kunigunde’s greeting. “She looks like another sick ba
by tonurse; but I’ll have no trouble about her;—that is all. Take her up toErmentrude; and thou, girl, have a care thou dost her will, and puttestnone of thy city fancies into her head.”
“And hark thee, girl,” added the old Freiherr, sitting up. “So thoucanst nurse her well, thou shalt have a new gown and a stout husband.”
“That way,” pointed the lady towards one of the four corner towers; andChristina moved doubtfully towards it, reluctant to quit her father, heronly protector, and afraid to introduce herself. The younger Freiherr,however, stepped before her, went striding two or three steps at a timeup the turret stair, and, before Christina had wound her way up, sheheard a thin, impatient voice say, “Thou saidst she was come, Ebbo.”
“Yes, even so,” she heard Freiherr Eberhard return; “but she is slow andtown-bred. She was afraid of crossing the moat.” And then both laughed,so that Christina’s cheeks tingled as she emerged from the turret intoanother vaulted room. “Here she is,” quoth the brother; “now will shemake thee quite well.”
It was a very bare and desolate room, with no hangings to the rough stonewalls, and scarcely any furniture, except a great carved bedstead, onewooden chair, a table, and some stools. On the bare floor, in front ofthe fire, her arm under her head, and a profusion of long hair fallinground her like flax from a distaff, lay wearily a little figure, besidewhom Sir Eberhard was kneeling on one knee.
“Here is my sisterling,” said he, looking up to the newcomer. “They sayyou burgher women have ways of healing the sick. Look at her. Think youyou can heal her?”
In an excess of dumb shyness Ermentrude half rose, and effectuallyhindered any observations on her looks by hiding her face away upon herbrother’s knee. It was the gesture of a child of five years old, butErmentrude’s length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less thanfourteen or fifteen. “What, wilt not look at her?” he said, trying toraise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted, feverish handsto Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that had a strangeeffect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her elder, “Canst thoucure her, maiden?”
“I am no doctor, sir,” replied Christina; “but I could, at least, makeher more comfortable. The stone is too hard for her.”
“I will not go away; I want the fire,” murmured the sick girl, holdingout her hands towards it, and shivering.
Christina quickly took off her own thick cloth mantle, well lined withdressed lambskins, laid it on the floor, rolled the collar of it over asmall log of wood—the only substitute she could see for a pillow—andshowed an inviting couch in an instant. Ermentrude let her brother layher down, and then was covered with the ample fold. She smiled as sheturned up her thin, wasted face, faded into the same whitey-brown tint asher hair. “That is good,” she said, but without thanks; and, feeling thesoft lambswool: “Is that what you burgher-women wear? Father is to giveme a furred mantle, if only some court dame would pass the DebateableFord. But the Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we could getdown. Jobst was so stupid. He did not give us warning in time; but heis to be hanged next time if he does not.”
Christina’s blood curdled as she heard this speech in a weak littlecomplaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in mind of BarbaraSchmidt’s little sister, who had pined and wasted to death. “Never mind,Trudchen,” answered the brother kindly; “meantime I have kept all thewild catskins for thee, and may be this—this—_she_ could sew them up intoa mantle for thee.”
“O let me see,” cried the young lady eagerly; and Sir Eberhard, walkingoff, presently returned with an armful of the beautiful brindled furs ofthe mountain cat, reminding Christina of her aunt’s gentle domesticfavourite. Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the placing out of them withgreat interest; and thus her brother left her employed, and so muchdelighted that she had not flagged, when a great bell proclaimed that itwas the time for the noontide meal, for which Christina, in spite of allher fears of the company below stairs, had been constrained by mountainair to look forward with satisfaction.
Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of thepersonal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a needfulpreliminary. With all her hair streaming, down she went, and was sogladly welcomed by her father that it was plain that her presence wasregarded as an unusual advance towards recovery, and Christina fearedlest he might already be looking out for the stout husband. She had muchto tell him about the catskin cloak, and then she was seized with eagercuriosity at the sight of Christina’s bundles, and especially at herlute, which she must hear at once.
“Not now,” said her mother, “there will be jangling and jingling enoughby and by—meat now.”
The whole establishment were taking their places—or rather tumbling intothem. A battered, shapeless metal vessel seemed to represent thesalt-cellar, and next to it Hugh Sorel seated himself, and kept a placefor her beside him. Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.’She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle. Besides the familythemselves, there were about a dozen men, all ruffianly-looking, and ofmuch lower grade than her father, and three women. One, old Ursel, thewife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman,with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, fromwhom Christina felt a shrinking recoil. The meal was dressed by Urseland her kitchen boy. From a great cauldron, goat’s flesh and brothtogether were ladled out into wooden bowls. That every one providedtheir own spoon and knife—no fork—was only what Christina was used to inthe most refined society, and she had the implements in a pouch hangingto her girdle; but she was not prepared for the unwashed condition of thebowls, nor for being obliged to share that of her father—far less for theabsence of all blessing on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness ofmanners prevailing thereat. Hungry as she was, she did not find it easyto take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved whenErmentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried upstairsby her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and left her to theattendance of Christina. Ursel had followed, but was petulantly repulsedby her young lady in favour of the newcomer, and went away grumbling.
Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute, andChristina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of her goods, intrembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the aspect of the meal, whichlooked even more repulsive in this later stage, and to one who was nolonger partaking of it.
Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish tears, andin dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to the sick girl, wholistened with a sort of rude wonder, and finally was lulled to sleep.Christina ventured to lay down her instrument and move towards thewindow, heavily mullioned with stone, barred with iron, and glazed withthick glass; being in fact the only glazed window in the castle. To hergreat satisfaction it did not look out over the loathsome court, but overthe opening of the ravine. The apartment occupied the whole floor of thekeep; it was stone-paved, but the roof was boarded, and there was a roundturret at each angle. One contained the staircase, and was that whichran up above the keep, served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eaglebanner. The other three were empty, and one of these, which had a strongdoor, and a long loophole window looking out over the open country,Christina hoped that she might appropriate. The turret was immediatelyover the perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain. A stonethrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew not where.Close to her ears rushed the descending waterfall in its leap over therock side, and her eyes could rest themselves on the green meadow landbelow, and the smooth water of the Debateable Ford; nay—far, far awaybeyond retreating ridges of wood and field—she thought she could track asilver line and, guided by it, a something that might be a city. Herheart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by Ermentrude’s fretfullyimperious voice.
“I was only looking forth from the window, lady,” she said, returning.
“Ah! thou saw’st no travellers at the Ford?” c
ried Ermentrude, startingup with lively interest.
“No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance. Know you if it be indeedUlm that we see from these windows?”
“Ulm? That is where thou comest from?” said Ermentrude languidly.
“My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt! O, if I can but see ithence, it will be joy!”
“I do not know. Let me see,” said Ermentrude, rising; but at the windowher pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what she waslooking at or for.
“Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished, I could notmistake it,” said Christina. “How beauteous the white spire will lookfrom hence!”
“Dome Kirk?” repeated Ermentrude; “what is that?”
Such an entire blank as the poor child’s mind seemed to be wasinconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of men,where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily interests of aself-governing municipality, and the numerous festivals, both secular andreligious, were an unconscious education, even without that which hadbeen bestowed upon her by teachers, as well as by her companionship withher uncle, and participation in his studies, taste and arts.
Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never gonebeyond the Kohler’s hut on the one side, and the mountain village on theother, but she never seen more of life than the festival at the wake thehermitage chapel there on Midsummer-day. The only strangers who evercame to the castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took service with herfather, or now and then a captive whom he put to ransom. She knewabsolutely nothing of the world, except for a general belief thatFreiherren lived there to do what they chose with other people, and thatthe House of Adlerstein was the freest and noblest in existence. Alsothere was a very positive hatred to the house of Schlangenwald, and noless to that of Adlerstein Wildschloss, for no reason that Christinacould discover save that, being a younger branch of the family, they hadsubmitted to the Emperor. To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald,or her Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratificationErmentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and brothershould make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was the moreabiding, because more practicable hope. She had no further ideas, exceptperhaps to elude her mother’s severity, and to desire her brother’ssuccess in chamois-hunting. The only mental culture she had everreceived was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater Noster, andAve, as correctly as might be expected from a long course of traditionaryrepetitions of an incomprehensible language. And she knew besides a fewGerman rhymes and jingles, half Christian, half heathen, with a legend ortwo which, if the names were Christian, ran grossly wild from allChristian meaning or morality. As to the amenities, nay, almost theproprieties, of life, they were less known in that baronial castle thanin any artisan’s house at Ulm. So little had the sick girl figured themto herself, that she did not even desire any greater means of ease thanshe possessed. She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs andblank weariness, but without the slightest formed desire for anything toremove her discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such assitting on her brother’s knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tastingthe mountain berries that he gathered for her. Any other desire sheexerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils oftravellers.
And this was Christina’s charge, whom she must look upon as the leastalien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment! The young and oldlords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less than didthe proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had not even themerit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she wasashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant as a contemptibleinterloper.
Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude hadsunk to sleep. She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to detectlights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of her uncleand aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids spinning andthe prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, mostprobably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it with therude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs,she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whosebed she was to share. She thought almost with envy of her own patroness,who was cast into the lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck—abetter fate, thought she, than to live on in such an abode ofloathsomeness and peril.
But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up her millstonewith her? And had not she been put into a dungeon full of venomousreptiles who, when they approached her, had all been changed to harmlessdoves? Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how this could be; andhad he not replied that the Church did not teach these miracles asmatters of faith, but that she might there discern in figure how meekChristian holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed therudest natures. This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit tolive or die!—might it be her part to do some good work by her, and infusesome Christian hope, some godly fear? Could it be for this that thesaints had led her hither?
The Dove in the Eagle's Nest Page 4