Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/103

 at the prison were yesterday doubled. Our duchess has a tight grasp."

"Stuff!" said the other, "I not only don't believe it, but what's more, I don't even believe there are any conspirators in Eisenherz who assume such a name."

"Come, come, neighbour," said the first, "we know there are disaffected people in Eisenherz, and it does not much matter what name they go by. You yourself probably are one of them, because you deny what every one knows is a fact. They know each other, that's certain."

The gossips were but too correct. Poor Mohrart was that day found guilty and sentenced to be broken on the wheel on the first day of November. An hour before midnight of the day of his trial the prisoner's cell door grated open. Mohrart leaped up from his knees, for he was praying. It was General Blossow.

"Mohrart," he said, "I was no friend of yours when you were in prosperity. I hated you because I thought you had proudly refused to answer the letters of my daughter who loved you, you thought I coveted the duke's power and title; but now I see it all. The associates of the Sealed Knots have proved to me that the dates of the letters shown at the trial were forged, and that it was the duchess and not you who poisoned the duke. She had long resolved his death. Through one of the same secret societies I have just gained access here to-night to plan your escape. Do you still love Beatrice? Did you ever really love her?"

"General Blossow, I love your daughter, so that I would not dread even that terrible death to-morrow, could I but press my lips to hers but once more. I always loved her. It was my evil pride alone that forbade me to ask the reason why my letters of passionate appeal as well as of passionate accusation were never answered. Saints in Heaven, how could I ever suspect her gentle heart of forgetfulness or of mean ambition!"

"Beatrice is here. You shall see her; she knows all now," said the general, throwing open the door. The next instant the lovers were clasped in each other's arms, in all the ecstatic joy of renewed hope.

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by the tramp of feet, and a sound of grounded muskets. The door flew open, and the duchess appeared upon the threshold.

"General," she said, mockingly, with the old viperish hatred in her pursed-up eyes,, "you seem surprised to see me. You were rash to trust my paid emissaries. I too, you see, have dealings with conspirators. Every step you took I knew. As for this wanton, seize her soldiers, for she has been an accomplice in this detestable crime, as I before found. General Blossow, you shall answer us promptly for this treason. Where are your brave conspirators of the Sealed Knot now? As for you, poisoner, the wheel will soon be ready for you. Yes, if half Eisenherz had joined in killing my poor stepson, half Eisenherz should perish miserably as you shall. Soldiers, to separate prisons with them. Remove them. Jailers, tear that woman from the murderer's arms."

There was a groan, the shriek of a fainting woman, and the ponderous door closed upon the unhappy Mohrart as the doors of a vault might do upon a corpse. The next time it opened it would be for the soldiers who were to lead him to a death of shame.

He seemed forsaken even by Heaven.

is a limit to the patience even of slaves. An insurrection had broken out in the city of Eisenherz. A rumour that Count Schwellenberg was marching upon the city from Hesse Darmstadt, with ten thousand men, having been summoned by the urgent entreaties of the duchess, had set every heart on fire. The mysterious members of the Sealed Knot Club had been, however, it was said, untiring in their efforts to delay the revolt, which they considered premature.

The insurgents, in an irresistible deluge, were pouring on towards the palace, now closely guarded by two thousand Hessian soldiers, who had sworn to defend the duchess to the last. The sea of angry faces had already surged into the great square of the cathedral, to mass together for the attack upon the palace. A dozen blacksmiths having dragged a cannon from the adjacent park, were already shouting for the advance, when a small group of masked men quietly emerged from a house next the cathedral, and dispersing through the crowd, whispered directions to the leaders of the mob. Their mandates at first seemed to be disputed.

"Let's burn the Hell-cat!" cried some. "She showed no mercy for others; she has no mercy for Mohrart or the general's daughter."

"Break her on the wheel," cried another, "as she did my father!"

"Hang her from the cathedral tower!" screamed a third. "She had my son shot yesterday for merely crying, 'Long live General Blossow.'"

But the frantic outcries of these men were in vain. A secret irresistible agency seemed at work. Even the blacksmiths left the cannon at the cathedral doors, the savage pikemen and hammermen, by twos and threes, turned sullenly homeward. The roaring crowd gradually grew silent as by enchantment, and melted like ice, for so the Sealed Knots had willed it.

When the duchess heard of it, she smiled, tapped her fan, and calmly said, "I thought the scum would never face bayonets. The instinct of self-preservation is still, you see, strong, even in the detested canaille."

was the annual custom of the duchess, who was as superstitious as she was cruel, to spend two days in the first week of every November in a little chapel half way up a lonely mountain,