Page:Prose works, from the original editions (Volume 1).djvu/195

 CHAPTER VIII.

Why then unbidden gush'd the tear?

Then would cold shudderings seize his brain, As gasping he labour'd for breath; The strange gaze of his meteor eye, Which, frenzied, and rolling dreadfully, Glared with hideous gleam, Would chill like the spectre gaze of Death, As, conjured by feverish dream, He seems o'er the sick man's couch to stand, And shakes the fell lance in his skeleton hand.

Yes;—they fled from Genoa; they had eluded pursuit and justice, but could not escape the torments of an outraged and avenging conscience, which, with stings the most acute, pursued them whithersoever they might go. Fortune even seemed to favour them: for fortune will, sometimes, in this world, appear to side with the wicked. Wolfstein had received notice that an uncle, possessed of immense wealth, had died in Bohemia, and bequeathed to him the whole of his estate. Thither, then, with Megalena, went Wolfstein. Their journey produced no event of consequence; suffice it to say, that they arrived at the spot where Wolfstein's possessions were situated.

Dark and desolate were the scenes which surrounded the no less desolate castle. Gloomy heaths, in unvarying sadness of immensity, stretched far and wide. A scathed pine or oak, blasted by the thunderbolts of heaven, alone broke the monotonous sameness of the imagery. Needless were it to describe the castle, built like all those of the Bohemian barons, in mingled Gothic and barbarian architecture. Over the dark expanse the dim moon beaming, and faintly, with its sepulchral