The Midnight Bell/Volume II/Chapter XIV

CHAPTER XIV.

In relating the occurrences of her own life, Lauretta omitted not to lay before the count such particulars as he was unacquainted with in that of her deceased mother; and the stress which she laid on the declaration of her mother's innocence, with regard to the suspicions which had been raised against her, on account of her continued acquaintance with count Frederic Cohenburg, her first and only love, seemed much to affect him.

"Oh!" exclaimed count Byroff, "had she but explained to me the state of her heart, we might now have both been happy, and I free from guilt."

A short silence ensued: the count then said, "Now, my child, attend to the tale of thy father's fortunes, and learn from thence that the commission of one rash act imperceptibly leads on the human heart to crimes once most distant from its imagination.

"My father and his sister were the only children of my grandfather, count Byroff, a German nobleman, who resided on a small estate about twenty leagues distant from Vienna; for as fortune is not always the sure companion of rank, his narrow circumstances had obliged him to retire from the splendour of the court.

"My aunt had the good fortune to captivate an Italian marchese of immense property; and having received her hand in marriage, he carried her with him into Italy.

"My father married a woman of rank, whose circumstances were but too much in the situation of his own; he did not many years survive his union with the woman of his heart, and dying, left my mother and myself, his only child, to the protection of my grandfather.

"Many unforeseen and cruel misfortunes had occurred to lessen the small property the old count possessed; and by his death, which happened just as I had attained my eighteenth year, I found the fortune which had devolved on me slender indeed. My mother and myself, however, resolved to live retired from the world, and by frugality to increase that little stock which my rank in life forbade me to attempt any other means of increasing.

"How weak are the prejudices by which we suffer ourselves to be ruled!

"A short time after the death of my grandfather a letter arrived in Germany from my aunt, informing us that her husband was lately dead, that the greater part of his property had devolved on her by his will, and inviting my mother and myself to pass over into Italy, and reside with her.

"Being a paternal estate on which we had resided, it would have been deemed a disgrace to a nobleman to sell it; we accordingly left Germany without assigning any reason for our departure.

"My aunt, the marchesa del Parmo, who resided in an elegant mansion in one of the most eligible spots in Venice, received us with the warmest cordiality, and exercised towards us the most friendly attentions; but my mother lived only a short time to be sensible of the marchesa's kindness. On her death my aunt seemed to double her assiduities to me; she told me, that she had resolved never to marry again, and should, with the exception of a few legacies, leave me heir to her entire property; I expressed my gratitude to her in terms suited to the extensive promise she had made me: she then told me, that she had provided for me a tutor, with whom she wished me to travel for a couple of years, before I formed any plan of settling in the world. She at this time was well acquainted with my attachment to your mother, which had begun a very short time after my arrival in Italy; and she as well as myself imagined that my attentions were far from being unfavourably received by her.

"The youthful mind pants for novelty; and the offer made me by my aunt was too fascinating not to induce me for a short period to forego the society of my Lauretta, flattering myself that from the improvement of travel I should return more worthy of her; for the marchesa having spoken in my favour to count Arieno, he had immediately assented to my proposal of espousing his daughter.

"When I had been absent from Italy about eighteen months I received a letter from the marchesa's steward, informing me that she had died suddenly, and had left me her sole heir.

"I immediately returned to Venice to take possession of my newly-acquired fortune, and had arrived there only a few hours when count Arieno paid me a joint visit of condolence on the loss of my aunt, and congratulation on my acquisition of fortune. Before his departure he reminded me of the verbal contract subsisting between us relative to his daughter, and at the same time entreated me, if I observed a dejectedness in her manner, not to notice it, as I should only renew an acute sorrow which had been preying on her spirits since the sudden death of an intimate friend, and which was now gradually wearing off.

"I readily acquiesced in a proposition which I imagined would conduce to the tranquillity of her I loved; and on visiting my Lauretta I was sensibly touched by the frown of grief which I observed settled on her languid countenance; I endeavoured to sooth her sorrow without reverting to its cause. I could not forbear noticing the striking change in one so tenderly beloved; she wept, and doubtless misconstrued the meaning of my words, as I did the cause of her sorrow.

"Whenever I visited her, I remarked that her father always remained in the apartment with us. I now see the cause of a conduct which then much surprised me; he knew the awe in which his daughter stood of him, and by his presence resolved to prevent an explanation on her side from taking place.

"Curses on the sordidness of a father, who dooms his child to misery, that he may swell his own proud coffers!

"I now never saw count Arieno, that he did not advance arguments to induce me to hasten my marriage, which, from my regard to the recent death of my aunt the marchesa, I had thought it consistent with propriety some time to defer. In a short time, however, his reasonings, from their co-incidence with my real feelings, prevailed over my scruples, and I was united to your mother.

"After the solemnization of our marriage, count Arieno insisted that we should pass at least a couple of months at his mansion; his reason, I then thought, was his averseness to part from his daughter: I now perceive that he wished to keep her under his own eye, in order that he might be the better able to inspect her conduct, which he was well aware his cruelty had given him reason to suspect, and which he hesitated immediately to communicate to me.

"I used every means in my power to restore to your mother that cheerfulness which had once been her never-failing companion; but a settled melancholy, which I found it impossible for me to dissipate, had taken possession of her mind.

"Six weeks after our marriage, I again mentioned to count Arieno, as I had before frequently done, my uneasiness at the unhappy state of my wife; and he then confessed to me, that he had but too much reason to believe I had an unworthy but favoured rival in the heart of his daughter.

"This was a blow which struck at once at the root of my happiness and pride: the whole mystery of count Arieno's interested conduct was in one moment exposed to my view, and I looked with contempt on the wretch who had made a traffic of his child.

"He now declared to me all the particulars of your mother's affection for count Frederic Cohenburg; was lavish in his praises on himself, both for the parental authority he had exerted over his daughter, and for that management which had made me his son-in-law.—He was the wretch who could pride himself on having, by one stroke of keen deceit, stamped the misery of an only child, and inveigled me into a state of eternal suspicion and unhappiness.

"I upbraided him with his base conduct;—he listened to me whilst I spoke, and smiled, as one secure in the completion of his own wish, and regardless of the fate of others: when I stopped speaking,

"'What prevents you to rid yourself of this rival?' he cried.

"'Whither can I fly from him?' I returned—'No where, but where he can follow.'

"'End him!'—exclaimed Arieno.

"I had never yet drawn my sword against a fellow-creature, and I shuddered at the idea.

"Arieno perceived it; and, pretending to finish a sentence which he had left uncompleted, he said,—'or suffer patiently that infamy which the world will attach to a man who tamely bears dishonour in the tenderest point.'

"His imputation on my honour pierced my heart.

"'Give me proof of your suspicions,' I returned, 'and I will instantly challenge him.'

"'You shall have proof, rest assured,' he answered, and with these words he left the room.

"To what a state of misery had this intelligence reduced me!—to learn that I was an object of abhorrence to the woman in whom I had placed my hopes of future happiness, and the victim of the joint pride and avarice of her father.

"Still, however, I resolved to bear my feelings in silence till the promised proof was produced to me: at one time doubting the truth of count Arieno's assertion, and at another, fearing I saw it fully confirmed; and alike despising the vile author of my doubts, whichever opinion swayed my mind.

"About a fortnight after my last conversation with count Arieno on the subject of my anxiety, he one day entered the apartment where I was sitting, with an open letter in his hand; he seated himself, and thus addressed me:—'I yesterday morning gave out that you and myself should this evening set out on a short excursion into the country, from which we should not return in two or three days; the object of my having said this you will clearly perceive, when I tell you, that it has answered my expectation in producing this epistle, which I have contrived to intercept.'

"He gave the letter into my hand; and, to my extreme mortification, I read in it an invitation to count Cohenburg from your mother, written by her own hand, to meet her that evening at her aunt's.

"Count Arieno, when I had concluded reading the letter, which I several times perused ere I could convince myself that my senses were not deceived in what I had read, proceeded to inform me in what manner he had gained it from the servant entrusted by my wife, and what means he had taken to prevent his return to his employer.

"I listened to him without attempting to speak, for my feelings were unutterable; and I was on the point of tearing the fatal letter to atoms, when he hastily sprang from his seat, and snatching it out of my hand,—'Hold!' he exclaimed, 'on this depends our hopes of vengeance.' He again seated himself at the table; and having sealed the note as it had before been, he summoned into the apartment a trusty servant, to whom he confided to carry the epistle to him to whom it was directed.

"Still absorbed in thought, my silence had been broken only by heavy sighs, till, on the servant's quitting the room, the count asked, 'Whether I had perceived what he had done?'

"I told him that I had; and inquired what purpose he meant to answer by it.

"'Count Cohenburg,' he replied, 'will doubtless attend to the invitation given him for this evening; he must necessarily pass through a dark lane in his way to my sister's, which is the place of appointment with your wife; it must therefore be our business to provide those who will there way-lay him: such may easily be found, and such as may be relied on.—We ourselves must leave the city at the hour I had mentioned we should set out; thus suspicion will be hoodwinked, and your rival fall an easy prey into the snare you will have spread for him.'

"I heard him pronounce these words with very different emotions from what I probably should have done had I been an Italian:—when he stopped speaking, I exclaimed, 'If he deserves death, why should I fear to be myself his punisher? If there be a palliation for shedding human blood, 'tis surely in behalf of him whose injuries loudly call for revenge: why then should I tempt another man to become criminal,—and, by paying the price of blood, add to the guilt that would still be mine, by having instigated him to become the instrument of an act whereof I should in reality be the agent?'

"It was some time before I could work upon Arieno, living in a country where the performance of murder is alike venal with other acts of hire, to listen to the arguments I advanced in favour of my being myself the redresser of my wrongs, and before I could prevail on him to promise to accompany me in the evening to the dark lane through which he had informed me count Cohenburg must inevitably pass in his way to the house of appointment with your mother: at length he promised to point it out to me, and we parted till the hour arrived at which Arieno had given out the preceding day that we should set out on our journey; we then mounted our horses, and rode to a small house about a quarter of a league out of the city, the habitation of a man who had formerly lived in the service of the count, and where we had pre-determined to leave our horses, and in the dusk of the evening return to the city on foot.

"We arrived in the dark lane nearly half an hour before the time mentioned in your mother's letter.—I drew my sword, and we placed ourselves under the shade of a low portico.—In a short time we heard footsteps.—A person muffled up in a cloak advanced rapidly towards us; count Arieno whispered to me, ''Tis he, 'tis the count himself.'—I immediately sprang forward to meet him, and in the name of a villain I called upon him to defend himself against the vengeance of an injured husband!—He made a blow at my sword with a stout cane which he held in his hand, and attempted to rush past me; but I quickly stepped back a few paces, and received his body on the point of my sword: he instantly fell, with a deep groan; and distant voices at the same moment assailing the ears of count Arieno and myself, we fled with all possible speed, I to the count's mansion, and he to the house of his sister, where he expected to find your mother, and from thence to re-conduct her to his own.

"What misery did I that night experience, on entering the apartment to which your mother had been conveyed on her return to her father's house! how did the cries and upbraidings of her agonised heart wound mine, although I conceived myself to have been so deeply injured by her!—She confessed to me all her love for count Frederic, but called on heaven to witness how free she was from the imputation of guilt laid upon her by me and her father.—I hardly dared credit what she affirmed; and yet so forcibly did the recollection of the ardent passion I once bore her plead for her in my heart, that I endeavoured, by every attention and every promise of future regard, to lull her into the oblivion of him she had lost, by fixing her mind on the assiduities of him she retained, fully resolving in my own mind, if she but ceased to upbraid me with the loss of count Frederic, again to take her to my bosom, and use every means of proving to her her loss replaced in an equally tender and affectionate lover.

"She that night altogether refused to listen to me; and I left her chamber with a heart as deeply lacerated as her own.

"Towards evening on the following day, I had again been endeavouring by repeated attentions to win on the heart I had embittered with sorrow, when I was summoned from my painful yet willing task, by count Arieno calling to me hastily to descend to him.

"I immediately went to him, and he in a few words informed me, that count Frederic had escaped; and that the person whom I had killed on the preceding evening proved to be the son of one of the first senators: that five thousand zechins were offered in reward to any one who might apprehend the murderer; and the punishment of exile and confiscation of property denounced by the state of Venice against those who might be acquainted with the perpetrator of the murder, and delay to deliver him into the hands of justice.

"What were my feelings on being informed that I was the murderer of an innocent man! I cannot describe, or you conceive; pain, poverty, sickness, loss of friends, or any other misery in its most aggravated state, and even all these combined, can give no faint idea of the pangs he feels, who has shed blood, which even the effusion of his own cannot re-animate.

"'Now,' said count Arieno, 'what would that friend merit, who would undertake to rescue you from the danger hovering round you?'

"If I were apprehended, death, I well knew, would be my doom; and death I at that moment could have received with ecstasy from any hand but that of the executioner: from dying on a public scaffold my heart, humbled as I felt myself, recoiled, and I eagerly answered, 'Every thing.'

"'Then,' said he, 'I will be that friend.—Now attend to the means: should you be apprehended for this crime, you are well assured your entire property becomes confiscate to the state.'

"I replied, that I was fully convinced it did.

"'Your safety,' he continued, 'depends on your immediately flying from this country; in such case, it is impossible you can collect the value of your possessions in so short a time as it is necessary for you to depart, in order to carry them with you; what you leave behind you in your own name, will be immediately confiscated; thus make over to me your personals, by far the greater division of your property; leave your estate open to confiscation, as some small atonement for your offence; make your escape instantly, while it yet remains in your power to effect it; and depend on my remitting to you what you shall make over to me, as soon as you shall have reached a place of safety.'

"There was a kindness in this offer of count Arieno to assist me in my distress, that made me overlook his past conduct; and with thanks I acquiesced in his proposition, and quickly proceeded to put it in execution.

"I had scarcely put my hand and seal to the deed which transferred to count Arieno my personal property, dispersed through many parts of Italy, when information was brought us by the physician who had attended your mother, that she had fled from her father's house. The count seemed to receive the tidings with indifference; and I was too much occupied by my own safety to give any farther thought to what I had heard, than that she had learned count Cohenburg's existence, and found means of escaping to him.

"A few hours afterwards I set out from the Venetian dominions, and in little more than a week I arrived in Paris, the place where I had determined to seek shelter from the laws of Venice, as I little doubted, from the number of spies I well knew to be employed by that state, I should soon be discovered to be the perpetrator of the deed on which I shuddered to reflect.

"On the day after my arrival, I wrote to count Arieno to inform him of the place of my retreat; I thought it unnecessary to add that an immediate remittance would be welcome to me, as he well knew that I had taken with me only what cash I happened to have in my possession at the time of my departure, and a few trinkets of small value.

"In about three weeks I received from him a letter, the purport of which, to my great consternation, and, I blush to add, astonishment, knowing what I already did of his infamous character, was nearly in the following words:—That the state had gained information of my being the assassin of the senator's son, and had accordingly confiscated such of my property as was publicly known to be mine; that he lamented this discovery having so early taken place, as it would inevitably prevent his being to me the friend he had pledged himself to be; for that, as a Venetian senator, he should incur the fear of death, by being known to assist any man now lying under the penalty of its laws; and could accordingly only send me his thanks for having, by the deed that had passed between us on the evening of my leaving Venice, given him the power of profiting by a sum of money which could never again on any terms be mine, and which would otherwise have fallen to the use of the state.

"'Upright senator!' I exclaimed, on perusing this infernal epistle; 'cautious in observing the outward forms of that state that he hesitates not privately to plunder!'—Oh! my child, how many villains wear the mask of worth like him, and, with the garb of office, cover a heart which knows no interest but its own; and contemplates no crime, of which an accumulation of its private wealth and pride will not seem to authorise the performance!"

The count paused a moment, then continued—"The keen sense of my own feelings, on a revisal of the villainy that had been practised against me, may perhaps have tempted me to draw too harsh a stricture on mankind in general: but surely I cannot be wrong in asserting, that he who will act villainously in the transactions of private life, cannot lay aside his nature when he acts for the public.

"To what a situation was I now reduced! my whole property consisting of only fifteen zechins, and two rings of small value, without the possible means of recovering what had so basely been wrested from me, or of seeking redress from him who had so deeply injured me, without exposing myself to the greatest of dangers;—in a city where I was an entire stranger; without a friend to whom I could apply for assistance; without an acquaintance to whose conversation I could fly for a transitory relief of my painful feelings, and without a cheerful thought that would afford me a momentary consolation within my own breast!

"My first step, however, was to avoid detection; as I knew not what power the state of Venice might have of demanding my person, should my retreat be discovered; and sometimes feared that Arieno, to insure to himself the possession of my property, might give information to the state whither I was fled, and have me apprehended, that, by my death, all doubts of my ever regaining what was lawfully mine, might be done away; but then again I considered, that he would be well aware, that, in case of such an accusation from him, revenge would prompt me to declare the state, rather than him, the possessor of that property I was myself doomed to forego; and this quieted my fears of any farther molestation from him: but, at all events, judging it to my advantage to obscure myself as much as possible, I changed my habit to that of the country I was now in, and called myself Montville, resolving still to remain in Paris, as the place where I was most likely to escape observation, well knowing that I should be most free from observation in the midst of a crowd.

"I had taken a lodging in an obscure part of the city; and my only amusement was the frequenting of a tavern in the neighbourhood, much resorted to by young men, who, though perhaps not in the most exalted stations of life, were however men of fashion and fortune.

"Every evening they met, in a greater or smaller number, at this house, and draughts were their entertainment: as a stranger, I had been generally noticed by them, and solicited to play; I knew myself to be an adept in the game, and thus readily accepted their invitation. The sums they staked were not large, or I could not have hazarded an engagement. I found some my equals in play; and when I engaged with these, good and bad fortune were alternately mine; but as my play was far superior to the generality of those who engaged with me, and as my circumstances, as I was sometimes tempted to think, induced me to place more attention on my game than my adversary usually gave to his, I was commonly, at the hour of retiring, the winner of a trifling sum; a circumstance which in my situation I considered of the most consolatory and promising nature: my precarious situation had taught me, hard as the reverse was, to be an economist; and in the course of six months I had collected nearly fifty louis-d'ors, and I now began to turn my thoughts to a subject to which they had before been directed; namely, whether I should pursue any means of discovering the retreat of your mother, and of revenging myself on the destroyer of my peace.

"After many debates with my own heart, I drew this conclusion:—'Will the death of count Cohenburg restore my peace?—No!—Will it not add guilt to hands already too deeply imbrued in blood?—It will!—Can I hope that my wife will be to me what she ought to be?—No!—Why then seek after her who shuns me, and add another sting to an already wounded conscience, by the murder of one whose death cannot restore my lost tranquillity?'

"Having resolved that it behoved me to forget an object lately so dear to me, my mind became more calm; for, when an opinion is once firmly adopted, every subsequent thought seems to strengthen the justness of that opinion.

"When my thoughts at times did turn back to your mother, amidst the censures my injuries raised against her in my heart, I still felt a portion of pity for one who had been driven to despair by the cruelty of an unfeeling parent.—For that parent, when my mind reverted to him, and too often, alas! it did, I felt the abhorrence I should have done against a demon.—'Is it possible,' I would cry, 'the earth can contain a monster capable of his accumulated crimes?—the sacrificer of an only child to his avarice!—the lurer of a youth into a marriage into which he had deceived his senses!—the instigator of that youth, when become his daughter's husband, to murder him who ought to have possessed her hand!—the ravisher of that youth's property, by the abuse of that faith which can alone bind man to man; and by the same act, the plunderer of that state, whose rights he had pledged his most solemn vow and life to defend!'"