Page:The European Magazine and London Review - Vol. 87.djvu/271

 spirits, “possess the same; and if my sister be not grown too sentimental, through a love affair of which she has just informed me by letter, you shall soon be acquainted with a charming sprightly lass, whom I should feel disposed to marry myself, if she were not my sister. Immediately after the nuptials, she will repair hither with her husband—I hope he will not turn out a churl, or if he is, I will not rest until I have separated them, or I’ll shoot him through the head—for I’ll not have my family blood adulterated with any thing gross and dull.”

A circumstance, however, soon occurred, which overthrew at once all that improvement in Clotilde’s mind, which the visitor’s sprightliness had brought about. A story which obtained currency in the neighbourhood was the occasion of it. The attachment of a young lady to a man beneath her in rank and fortune had been discovered by her relatives, and all intercourse between the parties consequently stopped. The lady had wisely opened her ears and understanding to the remonstrances of her friends, but the young lover took the disappointment so much to heart, that he fell into a violent fever which put an end to his torments. Almost every night since his death, he appeared to his cruel mistress cloathed in white and with threatening gestures. The ghost was not intimidated by the number of persons who sat up with her all night—but continued his troublesome visits, and followed her from chamber to chamber. Horror, grief, and deprivation of sleep, threatened the poor maiden with premature death.

This was the story told and attested by numbers of soi-disant eye-witnesses, and it produced a violent effect upon the romantic Baroness. In her own opinion she was far more blameable than the persecuted maiden, and the latter had the consolation of knowing that she had only broken off an unworthy attachment, and that the lover received only the punishment due to his presumption. But what was Wartenstein’s crime? “Is it not the extreme of cruelty,” said she to herself, “to reject the most disinterested offer of love, and to deny a man the house, merely for having made such an offer? and ought I to have let a husband’s authority go so far, as to make me deliver over an innocent mortal to the most horrible of deaths, because he possessed a heart for me, yet a heart devoid of guile, and even disowning all pretensions to my love? Thus Clotilde argued; for that Wartenstein would not survive his banishment from her society, she was as fully convinced as of her own existence. The circumstance that no person could give any intelligence of the Colonel, raised her dark forebodings to certainty. She at last, however, persuaded herself that he might have returned back to the city, under an assumed name, in order to be as near her as possible, and there contrive his death.

She passed a dreadful night; for it occurred to her, before she fell asleep, that the Colonel had frequently expressed himself in admiration of the character of Werther; her dream, therefore, presented her lover to her in the act of preparing for his long journey. She strove by screaming aloud to prevent the fatal touch of the trigger, but her voice failed her, and at the same instant the report of the dreadful pistol awoke her out of her disordered slumber.

Clotilde rang up the servants. “Go down, instantly, and see what is the matter out of doors!” cried she with a pale and distorted countenance, and sank back upon her pillow. The Baron, awakened by the noise, desired to know the meaning of this singular behaviour.

“You will know all,” said his lady, “when the servants return. Oh God! that I should have submitted, like a child, to your outrageous demand!”

“What demand?” “Have but patience, you will hear all.”

The servants now came up, and assured their mistress that they had discovered nothing at all in the street. “Oh! yes, Wartenstein, the unhappy Wartenstein, has been making an attempt on his life close by our door.”

“How do you know that improbable fact?” demanded the husband in a distant and ironical tone.

“I know it. Ascribe it to a presentiment, or a dream, or what you will—it is enough that I saw the unhappy youth distinctly, and heard the report of the pistol with my own ears.”

“And the servants, who are neither in a dream, nor under the influence of E. M. March, 1825.