The Avenger

Thomas De Quincey

"Why callest thou me murderer, and not rather the wrath of God
burning after the steps of the oppressor, and cleansing the earth
when it is wet with blood?"


That series of terrific events by which our quiet city and
university in the northeastern quarter of Germany were convulsed
during the year 1816, has in itself, and considered merely as a
blind movement of human tiger-passion ranging unchained among men,
something too memorable to be forgotten or left without its own
separate record; but the moral lesson impressed by these events is
yet more memorable, and deserves the deep attention of coming
generations in their struggle after human improvement, not merely
in its own limited field of interest directly awakened, but in all
analogous fields of interest; as in fact already, and more than
once, in connection with these very events, this lesson has
obtained the effectual attention of Christian kings and princes
assembled in congress. No tragedy, indeed, among all the sad ones
by which the charities of the human heart or of the fireside have
ever been outraged, can better merit a separate chapter in the
private history of German manners or social life than this
unparalleled case. And, on the other hand, no one can put in a
better claim to be the historian than myself.

I was at the time, and still am, a professor in that city and
university which had the melancholy distinction of being its
theater. I knew familiarly all the parties who were concerned in
it, either as sufferers or as agents. I was present from first to
last, and watched the whole course of the mysterious storm which
fell upon our devoted city in a strength like that of a West Indian
hurricane, and which did seriously threaten at one time to
depopulate our university, through the dark suspicions which
settled upon its members, and the natural reaction of generous
indignation in repelling them; while the city in its more
stationary and native classes would very soon have manifested THEIR
awful sense of things, of the hideous insecurity for life, and of
the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearths below
their very feet, by sacrificing, whenever circumstances allowed
them, their houses and beautiful gardens in exchange for days
uncursed by panic, and nights unpolluted by blood. Nothing, I can
take upon myself to assert, was left undone of all that human
foresight could suggest, or human ingenuity could accomplish. But
observe the melancholy result: the more certain did these
arrangements strike people as remedies for the evil, so much the
more effectually did they aid the terror, but, above all, the awe,
the sense of mystery, when ten cases of total extermination,
applied to separate households, had occurred, in every one of which
these precautionary aids had failed to yield the slightest
assistance. The horror, the perfect frenzy of fear, which seized
upon the town after that experience, baffles all attempt at
description. Had these various contrivances failed merely in some
human and intelligible way, as by bringing the aid too tardily--
still, in such cases, though the danger would no less have been
evidently deepened, nobody would have felt any further mystery than
what, from the very first, rested upon the persons and the motives
of the murderers. But, as it was, when, in ten separate cases of
exterminating carnage, the astounded police, after an examination
the most searching, pursued from day to day, and almost exhausting
the patience by the minuteness of the investigation, had finally
pronounced that no attempt apparently had been made to benefit by
any of the signals preconcerted, that no footstep apparently had
moved in that direction--then, and after that result, a blind
misery of fear fell upon the population, so much the worse than any
anguish of a beleaguered city that is awaiting the storming fury of
a victorious enemy, by how much the shadowy, the uncertain, the
infinite, is at all times more potent in mastering the mind than a
danger that is known, measurable, palpable, and human. The very
police, instead of offering protection or encouragement, were
seized with terror for themselves. And the general feeling, as it
was described to me by a grave citizen whom I met in a morning walk
(for the overmastering sense of a public calamity broke down every
barrier of reserve, and all men talked freely to all men in the
streets, as they would have done during the rockings of an
earthquake), was, even among the boldest, like that which sometimes
takes possession of the mind in dreams--when one feels oneself
sleeping alone, utterly divided from all call or hearing of
friends, doors open that should be shut, or unlocked that should be
triply secured, the very walls gone, barriers swallowed up by
unknown abysses, nothing around one but frail curtains, and a world
of illimitable night, whisperings at a distance, correspondence
going on between darkness and darkness, like one deep calling to
another, and the dreamer's own heart the center from which the
whole network of this unimaginable chaos radiates, by means of
which the blank PRIVATIONS of silence and darkness become powers
the most POSITIVE and awful.

Agencies of fear, as of any other passion, and, above all, of
passion felt in communion with thousands, and in which the heart
beats in conscious sympathy with an entire city, through all its
regions of high and low, young and old, strong and weak; such
agencies avail to raise and transfigure the natures of men; mean
minds become elevated; dull men become eloquent; and when matters
came to this crisis, the public feeling, as made known by voice,
gesture, manner, or words, was such that no stranger could
represent it to his fancy. In that respect, therefore, I had an
advantage, being upon the spot through the whole course of the
affair, for giving a faithful narrative; as I had still more
eminently, from the sort of central station which I occupied, with
respect to all the movements of the case. I may add that I had
another advantage, not possessed, or not in the same degree, by any
other inhabitant of the town. I was personally acquainted with
every family of the slightest account belonging to the resident
population; whether among the old local gentry, or the new settlers
whom the late wars had driven to take refuge within our walls.

It was in September, 1815, that I received a letter from the chief
secretary to the Prince of M----, a nobleman connected with the
diplomacy of Russia, from which I quote an extract: "I wish, in
short, to recommend to your attentions, and in terms stronger than
I know how to devise, a young man on whose behalf the czar himself
is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest.
He was at the battle of Waterloo as an aide-de-camp to a Dutch
general officer, and is decorated with distinctions won upon that
awful day. However, though serving in that instance under English
orders, and although an Englishman of rank, he does not belong to
the English military service. He has served, young as he is, under
VARIOUS banners, and under ours, in particular, in the cavalry of
our imperial guard. He is English by birth, nephew to the Earl of
E., and heir presumptive to his immense estates. There is a wild
story current, that his mother was a gypsy of transcendent beauty,
which may account for his somewhat Moorish complexion, though,
after all, THAT is not of a deeper tinge than I have seen among
many an Englishman. He is himself one of the noblest looking of
God's creatures. Both father and mother, however, are now dead.
Since then he has become the favorite of his uncle, who detained
him in England after the emperor had departed--and, as this uncle
is now in the last stage of infirmity, Mr. Wyndham's succession to
the vast family estates is inevitable, and probably near at hand.
Meantime, he is anxious for some assistance in his studies.
Intellectually he stands in the very first rank of men, as I am
sure you will not be slow to discover; but his long military
service, and the unparalleled tumult of our European history since
1805, have interfered (as you may suppose) with the cultivation of
his mind; for he entered the cavalry service of a German power when
a mere boy, and shifted about from service to service as the
hurricane of war blew from this point or from that. During the
French anabasis to Moscow he entered our service, made himself a
prodigious favorite with the whole imperial family, and even now is
only in his twenty-second year. As to his accomplishments, they
will speak for themselves; they are infinite, and applicable to
every situation of life. Greek is what he wants from you;--never
ask about terms. He will acknowledge any trouble he may give you,
as he acknowledges all trouble, en prince. And ten years hence you
will look back with pride upon having contributed your part to the
formation of one whom all here at St. Petersburg, not soldiers
only, but we diplomates, look upon as certain to prove a great man,
and a leader among the intellects of Christendom."

Two or three other letters followed; and at length it was arranged
that Mr. Maximilian Wyndham should take up his residence at my
monastic abode for one year. He was to keep a table, and an
establishment of servants, at his own cost; was to have an
apartment of some dozen or so of rooms; the unrestricted use of the
library; with some other public privileges willingly conceded by
the magistracy of the town; in return for all which he was to pay
me a thousand guineas; and already beforehand, by way of
acknowledgment for the public civilities of the town, he sent,
through my hands, a contribution of three hundred guineas to the
various local institutions for education of the poor, or for
charity.

The Russian secretary had latterly corresponded with me from a
little German town, not more than ninety miles distant; and, as he
had special couriers at his service, the negotiations advanced so
rapidly that all was closed before the end of September. And, when
once that consummation was attained, I, that previously had
breathed no syllable of what was stirring, now gave loose to the
interesting tidings, and suffered them to spread through the whole
compass of the town. It will be easily imagined that such a story,
already romantic enough in its first outline, would lose nothing in
the telling. An Englishman to begin with, which name of itself,
and at all times, is a passport into German favor, but much more
since the late memorable wars that but for Englishmen would have
drooped into disconnected efforts--next, an Englishman of rank and
of the haute noblesse--then a soldier covered with brilliant
distinctions, and in the most brilliant arm of the service; young,
moreover, and yet a veteran by his experience--fresh from the most
awful battle of this planet since the day of Pharsalia,--radiant
with the favor of courts and of imperial ladies; finally (which
alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts), an
Antinous of faultless beauty, a Grecian statue, as it were, into
which the breath of life had been breathed by some modern
Pygmalion;--such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one
man's head, should not have required for its effect the vulgar
consummation (and yet to many it WAS the consummation and crest of
the whole) that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of
romance or the necessities of a fairy tale. Unparalleled was the
impression made upon our stagnant society; every tongue was busy in
discussing the marvelous young Englishman from morning to night;
every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal appearance of
this gay apparition.

On his arrival at my house, I became sensible of a truth which I
had observed some years before. The commonplace maxim is, that it
is dangerous to raise expectations too high. This, which is thus
generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only
conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but
little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any
case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always
useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point. In
anything which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited
expectations will find ample room for gratification; while it is
certain that ordinary observers, possessing little sensibility,
unless where they have been warned to expect, will often fail to
see what exists in the most conspicuous splendor. In this instance
it certainly did no harm to the subject of expectation that I had
been warned to look for so much. The warning, at any rate, put me
on the lookout for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in
his personal appearance; while, on the other hand, this existed in
such excess, so far transcending anything I had ever met with in my
experience, that no expectation which it is in words to raise could
have been disappointed.

These thoughts traveled with the rapidity of light through my
brain, as at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and
power which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me.
Power, and the contemplation of power, in any absolute incarnation
of grandeur or excess, necessarily have the instantaneous effect of
quelling all perturbation. My composure was restored in a moment.
I looked steadily at him. We both bowed. And, at the moment when
he raised his head from that inclination, I caught the glance of
his eye; an eye such as might have been looked for in a face of
such noble lineaments--


"Blending the nature of the star
With that of summer skies;"


and, therefore, meant by nature for the residence and organ of
serene and gentle emotions; but it surprised, and at the same time
filled me more almost with consternation than with pity, to observe
that in those eyes a light of sadness had settled more profound
than seemed possible for youth, or almost commensurate to a human
sorrow; a sadness that might have become a Jewish prophet, when
laden with inspirations of woe.

Two months had now passed away since the arrival of Mr. Wyndham.
He had been universally introduced to the superior society of the
place; and, as I need hardly say, universally received with favor
and distinction. In reality, his wealth and importance, his
military honors, and the dignity of his character, as expressed in
his manners and deportment, were too eminent to allow of his being
treated with less than the highest attention in any society
whatever. But the effect of these various advantages, enforced and
recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare, was somewhat
too potent for the comfort and self-possession of ordinary people;
and really exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions
under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He
was not naturally of a reserved turn; far from it. His disposition
had been open, frank, and confiding, originally; and his roving,
adventurous life, of which considerably more than one half had been
passed in camps, had communicated to his manners a more than
military frankness. But the profound melancholy which possessed
him, from whatever cause it arose, necessarily chilled the native
freedom of his demeanor, unless when it was revived by strength of
friendship or of love. The effect was awkward and embarrassing to
all parties. Every voice paused or faltered when he entered a
room--dead silence ensued--not an eye but was directed upon him, or
else, sunk in timidity, settled upon the floor; and young ladies
seriously lost the power, for a time, of doing more than murmuring
a few confused, half-inarticulate syllables, or half-inarticulate
sounds. The solemnity, in fact, of a first presentation, and the
utter impossibility of soon recovering a free, unembarrassed
movement of conversation, made such scenes really distressing to
all who participated in them, either as actors or spectators.
Certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly beauty,
however heroic, and in whatever excess; it arose in part from the
many and extraordinary endowments which had centered in his person,
not less from fortune than from nature; in part also, as I have
said, from the profound sadness and freezing gravity of Mr.
Wyndham's manner; but still more from the perplexing mystery which
surrounded that sadness.

Were there, then, no exceptions to this condition of awestruck
admiration? Yes; one at least there was in whose bosom the spell
of all-conquering passion soon thawed every trace of icy reserve.
While the rest of the world retained a dim sentiment of awe toward
Mr. Wyndham, Margaret Liebenheim only heard of such a feeling to
wonder that it could exist toward HIM. Never was there so
victorious a conquest interchanged between two youthful hearts--
never before such a rapture of instantaneous sympathy. I did not
witness the first meeting of this mysterious Maximilian and this
magnificent Margaret, and do not know whether Margaret manifested
that trepidation and embarrassment which distressed so many of her
youthful co-rivals; but, if she did, it must have fled before the
first glance of the young man's eye, which would interpret, past
all misunderstanding, the homage of his soul and the surrender of
his heart. Their third meeting I DID see; and there all shadow of
embarrassment had vanished, except, indeed, of that delicate
embarrassment which clings to impassioned admiration. On the part
of Margaret, it seemed as if a new world had dawned upon her that
she had not so much as suspected among the capacities of human
experience. Like some bird she seemed, with powers unexercised for
soaring and flying, not understood even as yet, and that never
until now had found an element of air capable of sustaining her
wings, or tempting her to put forth her buoyant instincts. He, on
the other hand, now first found the realization of his dreams, and
for a mere possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated,
fearing, however, that in his own case it might prove a chimera, or
that he might never meet a woman answering the demands of his
heart, he now found a corresponding reality that left nothing to
seek.

Here, then, and thus far, nothing but happiness had resulted from
the new arrangement. But, if this had been little anticipated by
many, far less had I, for my part, anticipated the unhappy
revolution which was wrought in the whole nature of Ferdinand von
Harrelstein. He was the son of a German baron; a man of good
family, but of small estate who had been pretty nearly a soldier of
fortune in the Prussian service, and had, late in life, won
sufficient favor with the king and other military superiors, to
have an early prospect of obtaining a commission, under flattering
auspices, for this only son--a son endeared to him as the companion
of unprosperous years, and as a dutifully affectionate child.
Ferdinand had yet another hold upon his father's affections: his
features preserved to the baron's unclouded remembrance a most
faithful and living memorial of that angelic wife who had died in
giving birth to this third child--the only one who had long
survived her. Anxious that his son should go through a regular
course of mathematical instruction, now becoming annually more
important in all the artillery services throughout Europe, and that
he should receive a tincture of other liberal studies which he had
painfully missed in his own military career, the baron chose to
keep his son for the last seven years at our college, until he was
now entering upon his twenty-third year. For the four last he had
lived with me as the sole pupil whom I had, or meant to have, had
not the brilliant proposals of the young Russian guardsman
persuaded me to break my resolution. Ferdinand von Harrelstein had
good talents, not dazzling but respectable; and so amiable were his
temper and manners that I had introduced him everywhere, and
everywhere he was a favorite; and everywhere, indeed, except
exactly there where only in this world he cared for favor.
Margaret Liebenheim, she it was whom he loved, and had loved for
years, with the whole ardor of his ardent soul; she it was for
whom, or at whose command, he would willingly have died. Early he
had felt that in her hands lay his destiny; that she it was who
must be his good or his evil genius.

At first, and perhaps to the last, I pitied him exceedingly. But
my pity soon ceased to be mingled with respect. Before the arrival
of Mr. Wyndham he had shown himself generous, indeed magnanimous.
But never was there so painful an overthrow of a noble nature as
manifested itself in him. I believe that he had not himself
suspected the strength of his passion; and the sole resource for
him, as I said often, was to quit the city--to engage in active
pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard
me as a somnambulist might have heard me--dreaming with his eyes
open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful,
agitated; sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath,
invoking some absent person, praying, beseeching, menacing some
air-wove phantom; sometimes he slunk into solitary corners,
muttering to himself, and with gestures sorrowfully significant, or
with tones and fragments of expostulation that moved the most
callous to compassion. Still he turned a deaf ear to the only
practical counsel that had a chance for reaching his ears. Like a
bird under the fascination of a rattlesnake, he would not summon up
the energies of his nature to make an effort at flying away.
"Begone, while it is time!" said others, as well as myself; for
more than I saw enough to fear some fearful catastrophe. "Lead us
not into temptation!" said his confessor to him in my hearing (for,
though Prussians, the Von Harrelsteins were Roman Catholics), "lead
us not into temptation!--that is our daily prayer to God. Then, my
son, being led into temptation, do not you persist in courting,
nay, almost tempting temptation. Try the effects of absence,
though but for a month." The good father even made an overture
toward imposing a penance upon him, that would have involved an
absence of some duration. But he was obliged to desist; for he saw
that, without effecting any good, he would merely add spiritual
disobedience to the other offenses of the young man. Ferdinand
himself drew his attention to THIS; for he said: "Reverend father!
do not you, with the purpose of removing me from temptation, be
yourself the instrument for tempting me into a rebellion against
the church. Do not you weave snares about my steps; snares there
are already, and but too many." The old man sighed, and desisted.

Then came--But enough! From pity, from sympathy, from counsel, and
from consolation, and from scorn--from each of these alike the poor
stricken deer "recoiled into the wilderness;" he fled for days
together into solitary parts of the forest; fled, as I still hoped
and prayed, in good earnest and for a long farewell; but, alas! no:
still he returned to the haunts of his ruined happiness and his
buried hopes, at each return looking more like the wreck of his
former self; and once I heard a penetrating monk observe, whose
convent stood near the city gates: "There goes one ready equally
for doing or suffering, and of whom we shall soon hear that he is
involved in some great catastrophe--it may be of deep calamity--it
may be of memorable guilt."

So stood matters among us. January was drawing to its close; the
weather was growing more and more winterly; high winds, piercingly
cold, were raving through our narrow streets; and still the spirit
of social festivity bade defiance to the storms which sang through
our ancient forests. From the accident of our magistracy being
selected from the tradesmen of the city, the hospitalities of the
place were far more extensive than would otherwise have happened;
for every member of the corporation gave two annual entertainments
in his official character. And such was the rivalship which
prevailed, that often one quarter of the year's income was spent
upon these galas. Nor was any ridicule thus incurred; for the
costliness of the entertainment was understood to be an expression
of OFFICIAL pride, done in honor of the city, not as an effort of
personal display. It followed, from the spirit in which these
half-yearly dances originated, that, being given on the part of the
city, every stranger of rank was marked out as a privileged guest,
and the hospitality of the community would have been equally
affronted by failing to offer or by failing to accept the
invitation.

Hence it had happened that the Russian guardsman had been
introduced into many a family which otherwise could not have hoped
for such a distinction. Upon the evening at which I am now
arrived, the twenty-second of January, 1816, the whole city, in its
wealthier classes, was assembled beneath the roof of a tradesman
who had the heart of a prince. In every point our entertainment
was superb; and I remarked that the music was the finest I had
heard for years. Our host was in joyous spirits; proud to survey
the splendid company he had gathered under his roof; happy to
witness their happiness; elated in their elation. Joyous was the
dance--joyous were all faces that I saw--up to midnight, very soon
after which time supper was announced; and that also, I think, was
the most joyous of all the banquets I ever witnessed. The
accomplished guardsman outshone himself in brilliancy; even his
melancholy relaxed. In fact, how could it be otherwise? near to
him sat Margaret Liebenheim--hanging upon his words--more lustrous
and bewitching than ever I had beheld her. There she had been
placed by the host; and everybody knew why. That is one of the
luxuries attached to love; all men cede their places with pleasure;
women make way. Even she herself knew, though not obliged to know,
why she was seated in that neighborhood; and took her place, if
with a rosy suffusion upon her cheeks, yet with fullness of
happiness at her heart.

The guardsman pressed forward to claim Miss Liebenheim's hand for
the next dance; a movement which she was quick to favor, by
retreating behind one or two parties from a person who seemed
coming toward her. The music again began to pour its voluptuous
tides through the bounding pulses of the youthful company; again
the flying feet of the dancers began to respond to the measures;
again the mounting spirit of delight began to fill the sails of the
hurrying night with steady inspiration. All went happily. Already
had one dance finished; some were pacing up and down, leaning on
the arms of their partners; some were reposing from their
exertions; when--O heavens! what a shriek! what a gathering tumult!

Every eye was bent toward the doors--every eye strained forward to
discover what was passing. But there, every moment, less and less
could be seen, for the gathering crowd more and more intercepted
the view;--so much the more was the ear at leisure for the shrieks
redoubled upon shrieks. Miss Liebenheim had moved downward to the
crowd. From her superior height she overlooked all the ladies at
the point where she stood. In the center stood a rustic girl,
whose features had been familiar to her for some months. She had
recently come into the city, and had lived with her uncle, a
tradesman, not ten doors from Margaret's own residence, partly on
the terms of a kinswoman, partly as a servant on trial. At this
moment she was exhausted with excitement, and the nature of the
shock she had sustained. Mere panic seemed to have mastered her;
and she was leaning, unconscious and weeping, upon the shoulder of
some gentleman, who was endeavoring to soothe her. A silence of
horror seemed to possess the company, most of whom were still
unacquainted with the cause of the alarming interruption. A few,
however, who had heard her first agitated words, finding that they
waited in vain for a fuller explanation, now rushed tumultuously
out of the ballroom to satisfy themselves on the spot. The
distance was not great; and within five minutes several persons
returned hastily, and cried out to the crowd of ladies that all was
true which the young girl had said. "What was true?" That her
uncle Mr. Weishaupt's family had been murdered; that not one member
of the family had been spared--namely, Mr. Weishaupt himself and
his wife, neither of them much above sixty, but both infirm beyond
their years; two maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, from forty to
forty-six years of age, and an elderly female domestic.

An incident happened during the recital of these horrors, and of
the details which followed, that furnished matter for conversation
even in these hours when so thrilling an interest had possession of
all minds. Many ladies fainted; among them Miss Liebenheim--and
she would have fallen to the ground but for Maximilian, who sprang
forward and caught her in his arms. She was long of returning to
herself; and, during the agony of his suspense, he stooped and
kissed her pallid lips. That sight was more than could be borne by
one who stood a little behind the group. He rushed forward, with
eyes glaring like a tiger's, and leveled a blow at Maximilian. It
was poor, maniacal Von Harrelstein, who had been absent in the
forest for a week. Many people stepped forward and checked his
arm, uplifted for a repetition of this outrage. One or two had
some influence with him, and led him away from the spot; while as
to Maximilian, so absorbed was he that he had not so much as
perceived the affront offered to himself. Margaret, on reviving,
was confounded at finding herself so situated amid a great crowd;
and yet the prudes complained that there was a look of love
exchanged between herself and Maximilian, that ought not to have
escaped her in such a situation. If they meant by such a
situation, one so public, it must be also recollected that it was a
situation of excessive agitation; but, if they alluded to the
horrors of the moment, no situation more naturally opens the heart
to affection and confiding love than the recoil from scenes of
exquisite terror.

An examination went on that night before the magistrates, but all
was dark; although suspicion attached to a negro named Aaron, who
had occasionally been employed in menial services by the family,
and had been in the house immediately before the murder. The
circumstances were such as to leave every man in utter perplexity
as to the presumption for and against him. His mode of defending
himself, and his general deportment, were marked by the coolest,
nay, the most sneering indifference. The first thing he did, on
being acquainted with the suspicions against himself, was to laugh
ferociously, and to all appearance most cordially and unaffectedly.
He demanded whether a poor man like himself would have left so much
wealth as lay scattered abroad in that house--gold repeaters, massy
plate, gold snuff boxes--untouched? That argument certainly
weighed much in his favor. And yet again it was turned against
him; for a magistrate asked him how HE happened to know already
that nothing had been touched. True it was, and a fact which had
puzzled no less than it had awed the magistrates, that, upon their
examination of the premises, many rich articles of bijouterie,
jewelry, and personal ornaments, had been found lying underanged,
and apparently in their usual situations; articles so portable that
in the very hastiest flight some might have been carried off. In
particular, there was a crucifix of gold, enriched with jewels so
large and rare, that of itself it would have constituted a prize of
great magnitude. Yet this was left untouched, though suspended in
a little oratory that had been magnificently adorned by the elder
of the maiden sisters. There was an altar, in itself a splendid
object, furnished with every article of the most costly material
and workmanship, for the private celebration of mass. This
crucifix, as well as everything else in the little closet, must
have been seen by one at least of the murderous party; for hither
had one of the ladies fled; hither had one of the murderers
pursued. She had clasped the golden pillars which supported the
altar--had turned perhaps her dying looks upon the crucifix; for
there, with one arm still wreathed about the altar foot, though in
her agony she had turned round upon her face, did the elder sister
lie when the magistrates first broke open the street door. And
upon the beautiful parquet, or inlaid floor which ran round the
room, were still impressed the footsteps of the murderer. These,
it was hoped, might furnish a clew to the discovery of one at least
among the murderous band. They were rather difficult to trace
accurately; those parts of the traces which lay upon the black
tessellae being less distinct in the outline than the others upon
the white or colored. Most unquestionably, so far as this went, it
furnished a negative circumstance in favor of the negro, for the
footsteps were very different in outline from his, and smaller, for
Aaron was a man of colossal build. And as to his knowledge of the
state in which the premises had been found, and his having so
familiarly relied upon the fact of no robbery having taken place as
an argument on his own behalf, he contended that he had himself
been among the crowd that pushed into the house along with the
magistrates; that, from his previous acquaintance with the rooms
and their ordinary condition, a glance of the eye had been
sufficient for him to ascertain the undisturbed condition of all
the valuable property most obvious to the grasp of a robber that,
in fact, he had seen enough for his argument before he and the rest
of the mob had been ejected by the magistrates; but, finally, that
independently of all this, he had heard both the officers, as they
conducted him, and all the tumultuous gatherings of people in the
street, arguing for the mysteriousness of the bloody transaction
upon that very circumstance of so much gold, silver, and jewels,
being left behind untouched.

In six weeks or less from the date of this terrific event, the
negro was set at liberty by a majority of voices among the
magistrates. In that short interval other events had occurred no
less terrific and mysterious. In this first murder, though the
motive was dark and unintelligible, yet the agency was not so;
ordinary assassins apparently, and with ordinary means, had
assailed a helpless and unprepared family; had separated them;
attacked them singly in flight (for in this first case all but one
of the murdered persons appeared to have been making for the street
door); and in all this there was no subject for wonder, except the
original one as to the motive. But now came a series of cases
destined to fling this earliest murder into the shade. Nobody
could now be unprepared; and yet the tragedies, henceforward, which
passed before us, one by one, in sad, leisurely, or in terrific
groups, seemed to argue a lethargy like that of apoplexy in the
victims, one and all. The very midnight of mysterious awe fell
upon all minds.

Three weeks had passed since the murder at Mr. Weishaupt's--three
weeks the most agitated that had been known in this sequestered
city. We felt ourselves solitary, and thrown upon our own
resources; all combination with other towns being unavailing from
their great distance. Our situation was no ordinary one. Had
there been some mysterious robbers among us, the chances of a
visit, divided among so many, would have been too small to distress
the most timid; while to young and high-spirited people, with
courage to spare for ordinary trials, such a state of expectation
would have sent pulses of pleasurable anxiety among the nerves.
But murderers! exterminating murderers!--clothed in mystery and
utter darkness--these were objects too terrific for any family to
contemplate with fortitude. Had these very murderers added to
their functions those of robbery, they would have become less
terrific; nine out of every ten would have found themselves
discharged, as it were, from the roll of those who were liable to a
visit; while such as knew themselves liable would have had warning
of their danger in the fact of being rich; and would, from the very
riches which constituted that danger, have derived the means of
repelling it. But, as things were, no man could guess what it was
that must make him obnoxious to the murderers. Imagination
exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes which could by
possibility have made the poor Weishaupts objects of such hatred to
any man. True, they were bigoted in a degree which indicated
feebleness of intellect; but THAT wounded no man in particular,
while to many it recommended them. True, their charity was narrow
and exclusive, but to those of their own religious body it expanded
munificently; and, being rich beyond their wants, or any means of
employing wealth which their gloomy asceticism allowed, they had
the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent papists
of the suburbs. As to the old gentleman and his wife, their
infirmities confined them to the house. Nobody remembered to have
seen them abroad for years. How, therefore, or when could they
have made an enemy? And, with respect to the maiden sisters of Mr.
Weishaupt, they were simply weak-minded persons, now and then too
censorious, but not placed in a situation to incur serious anger
from any quarter, and too little heard of in society to occupy much
of anybody's attention.

Conceive, then, that three weeks have passed away, that the poor
Weishaupts have been laid in that narrow sanctuary which no
murderer's voice will ever violate. Quiet has not returned to us,
but the first flutterings of panic have subsided. People are
beginning to respire freely again; and such another space of time
would have cicatrized our wounds--when, hark! a church bell rings
out a loud alarm;--the night is starlight and frosty--the iron
notes are heard clear, solemn, but agitated. What could this mean?
I hurried to a room over the porter's lodge, and, opening the
window, I cried out to a man passing hastily below, "What, in God's
name, is the meaning of this?" It was a watchman belonging to our
district. I knew his voice, he knew mine, and he replied in great
agitation:

"It is another murder, sir, at the old town councilor's, Albernass;
and this time they have made a clear house of it."

"God preserve us! Has a curse been pronounced upon this city?
What can be done? What are the magistrates going to do?"

"I don't know, sir. I have orders to run to the Black Friars,
where another meeting is gathering. Shall I say you will attend,
sir?"

"Yes--no--stop a little. No matter, you may go on; I'll follow
immediately."

I went instantly to Maximilian's room. He was lying asleep on a
sofa, at which I was not surprised, for there had been a severe
stag chase in the morning. Even at this moment I found myself
arrested by two objects, and I paused to survey them. One was
Maximilian himself. A person so mysterious took precedency of
other interests even at a time like this; and especially by his
features, which, composed in profound sleep, as sometimes happens,
assumed a new expression, which arrested me chiefly by awaking some
confused remembrance of the same features seen under other
circumstances and in times long past; but where? This was what I
could not recollect, though once before a thought of the same sort
had crossed my mind. The other object of my interest was a
miniature, which Maximilian was holding in his hand. He had gone
to sleep apparently looking at this picture; and the hand which
held it had slipped down upon the sofa, so that it was in danger of
falling. I released the miniature from his hand, and surveyed it
attentively. It represented a lady of sunny, oriental complexion,
and features the most noble that it is possible to conceive. One
might have imagined such a lady, with her raven locks and imperial
eyes, to be the favorite sultana of some Amurath or Mohammed. What
was she to Maximilian, or what HAD she been? For, by the tear
which I had once seen him drop upon this miniature when he believed
himself unobserved, I conjectured that her dark tresses were
already laid low, and her name among the list of vanished things.
Probably she was his mother, for the dress was rich with pearls,
and evidently that of a person in the highest rank of court
beauties. I sighed as I thought of the stern melancholy of her
son, if Maximilian were he, as connected, probably, with the fate
and fortunes of this majestic beauty; somewhat haughty, perhaps, in
the expression of her fine features, but still noble--generous--
confiding. Laying the picture on the table, I awoke Maximilian,
and told him of the dreadful news. He listened attentively, made
no remark, but proposed that we should go together to the meeting
of our quarter at the Black Friars. He colored upon observing the
miniature on the table; and, therefore, I frankly told him in what
situation I had found it, and that I had taken the liberty of
admiring it for a few moments. He pressed it tenderly to his lips,
sighed heavily, and we walked away together.

I pass over the frenzied state of feeling in which we found the
meeting. Fear, or rather horror, did not promote harmony; many
quarreled with each other in discussing the suggestions brought
forward, and Maximilian was the only person attended to. He
proposed a nightly mounted patrol for every district. And in
particular he offered, as being himself a member of the university,
that the students should form themselves into a guard, and go out
by rotation to keep watch and ward from sunset to sunrise.
Arrangements were made toward that object by the few people who
retained possession of their senses, and for the present we
separated.

Never, in fact, did any events so keenly try the difference between
man and man. Some started up into heroes under the excitement.
Some, alas for the dignity of man! drooped into helpless
imbecility. Women, in some cases, rose superior to men, but yet
not so often as might have happened under a less mysterious danger.
A woman is not unwomanly because she confronts danger boldly. But
I have remarked, with respect to female courage, that it requires,
more than that of men, to be sustained by hope; and that it droops
more certainly in the presence of a MYSTERIOUS danger. The fancy
of women is more active, if not stronger, and it influences more
directly the physical nature. In this case few were the women who
made even a show of defying the danger. On the contrary, with THEM
fear took the form of sadness, while with many of the men it took
that of wrath.

And how did the Russian guardsman conduct himself amidst this
panic? Many were surprised at his behavior; some complained of it;
I did neither. He took a reasonable interest in each separate
case, listened to the details with attention, and, in the
examination of persons able to furnish evidence, never failed to
suggest judicious questions. But still he manifested a coolness
almost amounting to carelessness, which to many appeared revolting.
But these people I desired to notice that all the other military
students, who had been long in the army, felt exactly in the same
way. In fact, the military service of Christendom, for the last
ten years, had been anything but a parade service; and to those,
therefore, who were familiar with every form of horrid butchery,
the mere outside horrors of death had lost much of their terror.
In the recent murder there had not been much to call forth
sympathy. The family consisted of two old bachelors, two sisters,
and one grandniece. The niece was absent on a visit, and the two
old men were cynical misers, to whom little personal interest
attached. Still, in this case as in that of the Weishaupts, the
same twofold mystery confounded the public mind--the mystery of the
HOW, and the profounder mystery of the WHY. Here, again, no atom
of property was taken, though both the misers had hordes of ducats
and English guineas in the very room where they died. Their bias,
again, though of an unpopular character, had rather availed to make
them unknown than to make them hateful. In one point this case
differed memorably from the other--that, instead of falling
helpless, or flying victims (as the Weishaupts had done), these old
men, strong, resolute, and not so much taken by surprise, left
proofs that they had made a desperate defense. The furniture was
partly smashed to pieces, and the other details furnished evidence
still more revolting of the acharnement with which the struggle had
been maintained. In fact, with THEM a surprise must have been
impracticable, as they admitted nobody into their house on visiting
terms. It was thought singular that from each of these domestic
tragedies a benefit of the same sort should result to young persons
standing in nearly the same relation. The girl who gave the alarm
at the ball, with two little sisters, and a little orphan nephew,
their cousin, divided the very large inheritance of the Weishaupts;
and in this latter case the accumulated savings of two long lives
all vested in the person of the amiable grandniece.

But now, as if in mockery of all our anxious consultations and
elaborate devices, three fresh murders took place on the two
consecutive nights succeeding these new arrangements. And in one
case, as nearly as time could be noted, the mounted patrol must
have been within call at the very moment when the awful work was
going on. I shall not dwell much upon them; but a few
circumstances are too interesting to be passed over. The earliest
case on the first of the two nights was that of a currier. He was
fifty years old; not rich, but well off. His first wife was dead,
and his daughters by her were married away from their father's
house. He had married a second wife, but, having no children by
her, and keeping no servants, it is probable that, but for an
accident, no third person would have been in the house at the time
when the murderers got admittance. About seven o'clock, a
wayfaring man, a journeyman currier, who, according to our German
system, was now in his wanderjahre, entered the city from the
forest. At the gate he made some inquiries about the curriers and
tanners of our town; and, agreeably to the information he received,
made his way to this Mr. Heinberg. Mr. Heinberg refused to admit
him, until he mentioned his errand, and pushed below the door a
letter of recommendation from a Silesian correspondent, describing
him as an excellent and steady workman. Wanting such a man, and
satisfied by the answers returned that he was what he represented
himself, Mr. Heinberg unbolted his door and admitted him. Then,
after slipping the bolt into its place, he bade him sit to the
fire, brought him a glass of beer, conversed with him for ten
minutes, and said: "You had better stay here to-night; I'll tell
you why afterwards; but now I'll step upstairs, and ask my wife
whether she can make up a bed for you; and do you mind the door
while I'm away." So saying, he went out of the room. Not one
minute had he been gone when there came a gentle knock at the door.
It was raining heavily, and, being a stranger to the city, not
dreaming that in any crowded town such a state of things could
exist as really did in this, the young man, without hesitation,
admitted the person knocking. He has declared since--but, perhaps,
confounding the feelings gained from better knowledge with the
feelings of the moment--that from the moment he drew the bolt he
had a misgiving that he had done wrong. A man entered in a
horseman's cloak, and so muffled up that the journeyman could
discover none of his features. In a low tone the stranger said,
"Where's Heinberg?"--"Upstairs."--"Call him down, then." The
journeyman went to the door by which Mr. Heinberg had left him, and
called, "Mr. Heinberg, here's one wanting you!" Mr. Heinberg heard
him, for the man could distinctly catch these words: "God bless me!
has the man opened the door? O, the traitor! I see it." Upon
this he felt more and more consternation, though not knowing why.
Just then he heard a sound of feet behind him. On turning round,
he beheld three more men in the room; one was fastening the outer
door; one was drawing some arms from a cupboard, and two others
were whispering together. He himself was disturbed and perplexed,
and felt that all was not right. Such was his confusion, that
either all the men's faces must have been muffled up, or at least
he remembered nothing distinctly but one fierce pair of eyes
glaring upon him. Then, before he could look round, came a man
from behind and threw a sack over his head, which was drawn tight
about his waist, so as to confine his arms, as well as to impede
his hearing in part, and his voice altogether. He was then pushed
into a room; but previously he had heard a rush upstairs, and words
like those of a person exulting, and then a door closed. Once it
opened, and he could distinguish the words, in one voice, "And for
THAT!" to which another voice replied, in tones that made his heart
quake, "Aye, for THAT, sir." And then the same voice went on
rapidly to say, "O dog! could you hope"--at which word the door
closed again. Once he thought that he heard a scuffle, and he was
sure that he heard the sound of feet, as if rushing from one corner
of a room to another. But then all was hushed and still for about
six or seven minutes, until a voice close to his ear said, "Now,
wait quietly till some persons come in to release you. This will
happen within half an hour." Accordingly, in less than that time,
he again heard the sound of feet within the house, his own bandages
were liberated, and he was brought to tell his story at the police
office. Mr. Heinberg was found in his bedroom. He had died by
strangulation, and the cord was still tightened about his neck.
During the whole dreadful scene his youthful wife had been locked
into a closet, where she heard or saw nothing.

In the second case, the object of vengeance was again an elderly
man. Of the ordinary family, all were absent at a country house,
except the master and a female servant. She was a woman of
courage, and blessed with the firmest nerves; so that she might
have been relied on for reporting accurately everything seen or
heard. But things took another course. The first warning that she
had of the murderers' presence was from their steps and voices
already in the hall. She heard her master run hastily into the
hall, crying out, "Lord Jesus!--Mary, Mary, save me!" The servant
resolved to give what aid she could, seized a large poker, and was
hurrying to his assistance, when she found that they had nailed up
the door of communication at the head of the stairs. What passed
after this she could not tell; for, when the impulse of intrepid
fidelity had been balked, and she found that her own safety was
provided for by means which made it impossible to aid a poor fellow
creature who had just invoked her name, the generous-hearted
creature was overcome by anguish of mind, and sank down on the
stair, where she lay, unconscious of all that succeeded, until she
found herself raised in the arms of a mob who had entered the
house. And how came they to have entered? In a way
characteristically dreadful. The night was starlit; the patrols
had perambulated the street without noticing anything suspicious,
when two foot passengers, who were following in their rear,
observed a dark-colored stream traversing the causeway. One of
them, at the same instant tracing the stream backward with his
eyes, observed that it flowed from under the door of Mr. Munzer,
and, dipping his finger in the trickling fluid, he held it up to
the lamplight, yelling out at the moment, "Why, this is blood!" It
was so, indeed, and it was yet warm. The other saw, heard, and
like an arrow flew after the horse patrol, then in the act of
turning the corner. One cry, full of meaning, was sufficient for
ears full of expectation. The horsemen pulled up, wheeled, and in
another moment reined up at Mr. Munzer's door. The crowd,
gathering like the drifting of snow, supplied implements which soon
forced the chains of the door and all other obstacles. But the
murderous party had escaped, and all traces of their persons had
vanished, as usual.

Rarely did any case occur without some peculiarity more or less
interesting. In that which happened on the following night, making
the fifth in the series, an impressive incident varied the monotony
of horrors. In this case the parties aimed at were two elderly
ladies, who conducted a female boarding school. None of the pupils
had as yet returned to school from their vacation; but two sisters,
young girls of thirteen and sixteen, coming from a distance, had
stayed at school throughout the Christmas holidays. It was the
youngest of these who gave the only evidence of any value, and one
which added a new feature of alarm to the existing panic. Thus it
was that her testimony was given: On the day before the murder, she
and her sister were sitting with the old ladies in a room fronting
to the street; the elder ladies were reading, the younger ones
drawing. Louisa, the youngest, never had her ear inattentive to
the slightest sound, and once it struck her that she heard the
creaking of a foot upon the stairs. She said nothing, but,
slipping out of the room, she ascertained that the two female
servants were in the kitchen, and could not have been absent; that
all the doors and windows, by which ingress was possible, were not
only locked, but bolted and barred--a fact which excluded all
possibility of invasion by means of false keys. Still she felt
persuaded that she had heard the sound of a heavy foot upon the
stairs. It was, however, daylight, and this gave her confidence;
so that, without communicating her alarm to anybody, she found
courage to traverse the house in every direction; and, as nothing
was either seen or heard, she concluded that her ears had been too
sensitively awake. Yet that night, as she lay in bed, dim terrors
assailed her, especially because she considered that, in so large a
house, some closet or other might have been overlooked, and, in
particular, she did not remember to have examined one or two
chests, in which a man could have lain concealed. Through the
greater part of the night she lay awake; but as one of the town
clocks struck four, she dismissed her anxieties, and fell asleep.
The next day, wearied with this unusual watching, she proposed to
her sister that they should go to bed earlier than usual. This
they did; and, on their way upstairs, Louisa happened to think
suddenly of a heavy cloak, which would improve the coverings of her
bed against the severity of the night. The cloak was hanging up in
a closet within a closet, both leading off from a large room used
as the young ladies' dancing school. These closets she had
examined on the previous day, and therefore she felt no particular
alarm at this moment. The cloak was the first article which met
her sight; it was suspended from a hook in the wall, and close to
the door. She took it down, but, in doing so, exposed part of the
wall and of the floor, which its folds had previously concealed.
Turning away hastily, the chances were that she had gone without
making any discovery. In the act of turning, however, her light
fell brightly on a man's foot and leg. Matchless was her presence
of mind; having previously been humming an air, she continued to do
so. But now came the trial; her sister was bending her steps to
the same closet. If she suffered her to do so, Lottchen would
stumble on the same discovery, and expire of fright. On the other
hand, if she gave her a hint, Lottchen would either fail to
understand her, or, gaining but a glimpse of her meaning, would
shriek aloud, or by some equally decisive expression convey the
fatal news to the assassin that he had been discovered. In this
torturing dilemma fear prompted an expedient, which to Lottchen
appeared madness, and to Louisa herself the act of a sibyl instinct
with blind inspiration. "Here," said she, "is our dancing room.
When shall we all meet and dance again together?" Saying which,
she commenced a wild dance, whirling her candle round her head
until the motion extinguished it; then, eddying round her sister in
narrowing circles, she seized Lottchen's candle also, blew it out,
and then interrupted her own singing to attempt a laugh. But the
laugh was hysterical. The darkness, however, favored her; and,
seizing her sister's arm, she forced her along, whispering, "Come,
come, come!" Lottchen could not be so dull as entirely to
misunderstand her. She suffered herself to be led up the first
flight of stairs, at the head of which was a room looking into the
street. In this they would have gained an asylum, for the door had
a strong bolt. But, as they were on the last steps of the landing,
they could hear the hard breathing and long strides of the murderer
ascending behind them. He had watched them through a crevice, and
had been satisfied by the hysterical laugh of Louisa that she had
seen him. In the darkness he could not follow fast, from ignorance
of the localities, until he found himself upon the stairs. Louisa,
dragging her sister along, felt strong as with the strength of
lunacy, but Lottchen hung like a weight of lead upon her. She
rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lottchen fell. At
that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud
clattering ascent. Already he was on the topmost stair; already he
was throwing himself at a bound against the door, when Louisa,
having dragged her sister into the room, closed the door and sent
the bolt home in the very instant that the murderer's hand came
into contact with the handle. Then, from the violence of her
emotions, she fell down in a fit, with her arm around the sister
whom she had saved.

How long they lay in this state neither ever knew. The two old
ladies had rushed upstairs on hearing the tumult. Other persons
had been concealed in other parts of the house. The servants found
themselves suddenly locked in, and were not sorry to be saved from
a collision which involved so awful a danger. The old ladies had
rushed, side by side, into the very center of those who were
seeking them. Retreat was impossible; two persons at least were
heard following them upstairs. Something like a shrieking
expostulation and counter-expostulation went on between the ladies
and the murderers; then came louder voices--then one heart-piercing
shriek, and then another--and then a slow moaning and a dead
silence. Shortly afterwards was heard the first crashing of the
door inward by the mob; but the murderers had fled upon the first
alarm, and, to the astonishment of the servants, had fled upward.
Examination, however, explained this: from a window in the roof
they had passed to an adjoining house recently left empty; and
here, as in other cases, we had proof how apt people are, in the
midst of elaborate provisions against remote dangers, to neglect
those which are obvious.

The reign of terror, it may be supposed, had now reached its acme.
The two old ladies were both lying dead at different points on the
staircase, and, as usual, no conjecture could be made as to the
nature of the offense which they had given; but that the murder WAS
a vindictive one, the usual evidence remained behind, in the proofs
that no robbery had been attempted. Two new features, however,
were now brought forward in this system of horrors, one of which
riveted the sense of their insecurity to all families occupying
extensive houses, and the other raised ill blood between the city
and the university, such as required years to allay. The first
arose out of the experience, now first obtained, that these
assassins pursued the plan of secreting themselves within the house
where they meditated a murder. All the care, therefore, previously
directed to the securing of doors and windows after nightfall
appeared nugatory. The other feature brought to light on this
occasion was vouched for by one of the servants, who declared that,
the moment before the door of the kitchen was fastened upon herself
and fellow servant, she saw two men in the hall, one on the point
of ascending the stairs, the other making toward the kitchen; that
she could not distinguish the faces of either, but that both were
dressed in the academic costume belonging to the students of the
university. The consequences of such a declaration need scarcely
be mentioned. Suspicion settled upon the students, who were more
numerous since the general peace, in a much larger proportion
military, and less select or respectable than heretofore. Still,
no part of the mystery was cleared up by this discovery. Many of
the students were poor enough to feel the temptation that might be
offered by any LUCRATIVE system of outrage. Jealous and painful
collusions were, in the meantime, produced; and, during the latter
two months of this winter, it may be said that our city exhibited
the very anarchy of evil passions. This condition of things lasted
until the dawning of another spring.

It will be supposed that communications were made to the supreme
government of the land as soon as the murders in our city were
understood to be no casual occurrences, but links in a systematic
series. Perhaps it might happen from some other business, of a
higher kind, just then engaging the attention of our governors,
that our representations did not make the impression we had
expected. We could not, indeed, complain of absolute neglect from
the government. They sent down one or two of their most
accomplished police officers, and they suggested some counsels,
especially that we should examine more strictly into the quality of
the miscellaneous population who occupied our large suburb. But
they more than hinted that no necessity was seen either for
quartering troops upon us, or for arming our local magistracy with
ampler powers.

This correspondence with the central government occupied the month
of March, and, before that time, the bloody system had ceased as
abruptly as it began. The new police officer flattered himself
that the terror of his name had wrought this effect; but judicious
people thought otherwise. All, however, was quiet until the depth
of summer, when, by way of hinting to us, perhaps, that the
dreadful power which clothed itself with darkness had not expired,
but was only reposing from its labors, all at once the chief jailer
of the city was missing. He had been in the habit of taking long
rides in the forest, his present situation being much of a
sinecure. It was on the first of July that he was missed. In
riding through the city gates that morning, he had mentioned the
direction which he meant to pursue; and the last time he was seen
alive was in one of the forest avenues, about eight miles from the
city, leading toward the point he had indicated. This jailer was
not a man to be regretted on his own account; his life had been a
tissue of cruelty and brutal abuse of his powers, in which he had
been too much supported by the magistrates, partly on the plea that
it was their duty to back their own officers against all
complainers, partly also from the necessities created by the
turbulent times for a more summary exercise of their magisterial
authority. No man, therefore, on his own separate account, could
more willingly have been spared than this brutal jailer; and it was
a general remark that, had the murderous band within our walls
swept away this man only, they would have merited the public
gratitude as purifiers from a public nuisance. But was it certain
that the jailer had died by the same hands as had so deeply
afflicted the peace of our city during the winter--or, indeed, that
he had been murdered at all? The forest was too extensive to be
searched; and it was possible that he might have met with some
fatal accident. His horse had returned to the city gates in the
night, and was found there in the morning. Nobody, however, for
months could give information about his rider; and it seemed
probable that he would not be discovered until the autumn and the
winter should again carry the sportsman into every thicket and
dingle of this sylvan tract. One person only seemed to have more
knowledge on this subject than others, and that was poor Ferdinand
von Harrelstein. He was now a mere ruin of what he had once been,
both as to intellect and moral feeling; and I observed him
frequently smile when the jailer was mentioned. "Wait," he would
say, "till the leaves begin to drop; then you will see what fine
fruit our forest bears." I did not repeat these expressions to
anybody except one friend, who agreed with me that the jailer had
probably been hanged in some recess of the forest, which summer
veiled with its luxuriant umbrage; and that Ferdinand, constantly
wandering in the forest, had discovered the body; but we both
acquitted him of having been an accomplice in the murder.

Meantime the marriage between Margaret Liebenheim and Maximilian
was understood to be drawing near. Yet one thing struck everybody
with astonishment. As far as the young people were concerned,
nobody could doubt that all was arranged; for never was happiness
more perfect than that which seemed to unite them. Margaret was
the impersonation of May-time and youthful rapture; even Maximilian
in her presence seemed to forget his gloom, and the worm which
gnawed at his heart was charmed asleep by the music of her voice,
and the paradise of her smiles. But, until the autumn came,
Margaret's grandfather had never ceased to frown upon this
connection, and to support the pretensions of Ferdinand. The
dislike, indeed, seemed reciprocal between him and Maximilian.
Each avoided the other's company and as to the old man, he went so
far as to speak sneeringly of Maximilian. Maximilian despised him
too heartily to speak of him at all. When he could not avoid
meeting him, he treated him with a stern courtesy, which distressed
Margaret as often as she witnessed it. She felt that her
grandfather had been the aggressor; and she felt also that he did
injustice to the merits of her lover. But she had a filial
tenderness for the old man, as the father of her sainted mother,
and on his own account, continually making more claims on her pity,
as the decay of his memory, and a childish fretfulness growing upon
him from day to day, marked his increasing imbecility.

Equally mysterious it seemed, that about this time Miss Liebenheim
began to receive anonymous letters, written in the darkest and most
menacing terms. Some of them she showed to me. I could not guess
at their drift. Evidently they glanced at Maximilian, and bade her
beware of connection with him; and dreadful things were insinuated
about him. Could these letters be written by Ferdinand? Written
they were not, but could they be dictated by him? Much I feared
that they were; and the more so for one reason.

All at once, and most inexplicably, Margaret's grandfather showed a
total change of opinion in his views as to her marriage. Instead
of favoring Harrelstein's pretensions, as he had hitherto done, he
now threw the feeble weight of his encouragement into Maximilian's
scale; though, from the situation of all the parties, nobody
attached any PRACTICAL importance to the change in Mr. Liebenheim's
way of thinking. Nobody? Is that true? No; one person DID attach
the greatest weight to the change--poor, ruined Ferdinand. He, so
long as there was one person to take his part, so long as the
grandfather of Margaret showed countenance to himself, had still
felt his situation not utterly desperate.

Thus were things situated, when in November, all the leaves daily
blowing off from the woods, and leaving bare the most secret haunts
of the thickets, the body of the jailer was left exposed in the
forest; but not, as I and my friend had conjectured, hanged. No;
he had died apparently by a more horrid death--by that of
crucifixion. The tree, a remarkable one, bore upon a part of its
trunk this brief but savage inscription:--"T. H., jailer at -----;
Crucified July 1, 1816."

A great deal of talk went on throughout the city upon this
discovery; nobody uttered one word of regret on account of the
wretched jailer; on the contrary, the voice of vengeance, rising up
in many a cottage, reached my ears in every direction as I walked
abroad. The hatred in itself seemed horrid and unchristian, and
still more so after the man's death; but, though horrid and
fiendish for itself, it was much more impressive, considered as the
measure and exponent of the damnable oppression which must have
existed to produce it.

At first, when the absence of the jailer was a recent occurrence,
and the presence of the murderers among us was, in consequence,
revived to our anxious thoughts, it was an event which few alluded
to without fear. But matters were changed now; the jailer had been
dead for months, and this interval, during which the murderer's
hand had slept, encouraged everybody to hope that the storm had
passed over our city; that peace had returned to our hearths; and
that henceforth weakness might sleep in safety, and innocence
without anxiety. Once more we had peace within our walls, and
tranquillity by our firesides. Again the child went to bed in
cheerfulness, and the old man said his prayers in serenity.
Confidence was restored; peace was re-established; and once again
the sanctity of human life became the rule and the principle for
all human hands among us. Great was the joy; the happiness was
universal.

O heavens! by what a thunderbolt were we awakened from our
security! On the night of the twenty-seventh of December, half an
hour, it might be, after twelve o'clock, an alarm was given that
all was not right in the house of Mr. Liebenheim. Vast was the
crowd which soon collected in breathless agitation. In two minutes
a man who had gone round by the back of the house was heard
unbarring Mr. Liebenheim's door: he was incapable of uttering a
word; but his gestures, as he threw the door open and beckoned to
the crowd, were quite enough. In the hall, at the further
extremity, and as if arrested in the act of making for the back
door, lay the bodies of old Mr. Liebenheim and one of his sisters,
an aged widow; on the stair lay another sister, younger and
unmarried, but upward of sixty. The hall and lower flight of
stairs were floating with blood. Where, then, was Miss Liebenheim,
the granddaughter? That was the universal cry; for she was beloved
as generally as she was admired. Had the infernal murderers been
devilish enough to break into that temple of innocent and happy
life? Everyone asked the question, and everyone held his breath to
listen; but for a few moments no one dared to advance; for the
silence of the house was ominous. At length some one cried out
that Miss Liebenheim had that day gone upon a visit to a friend,
whose house was forty miles distant in the forest. "Aye," replied
another," she had settled to go; but I heard that something had
stopped her." The suspense was now at its height, and the crowd
passed from room to room, but found no traces of Miss Liebenheim.
At length they ascended the stair, and in the very first room, a
small closet, or boudoir, lay Margaret, with her dress soiled
hideously with blood. The first impression was that she also had
been murdered; but, on a nearer approach, she appeared to be
unwounded, and was manifestly alive. Life had not departed, for
her breath sent a haze over a mirror, but it was suspended, and she
was laboring in some kind of fit. The first act of the crowd was
to carry her into the house of a friend on the opposite side of the
street, by which time medical assistance had crowded to the spot.
Their attentions to Miss Liebenheim had naturally deranged the
condition of things in the little room, but not before many people
found time to remark that one of the murderers must have carried
her with his bloody hands to the sofa on which she lay, for water
had been sprinkled profusely over her face and throat, and water
was even placed ready to her hand, when she might happen to
recover, upon a low foot-stool by the side of the sofa.

On the following morning, Maximilian, who had been upon a hunting
party in the forest, returned to the city, and immediately learned
the news. I did not see him for some hours after, but he then
appeared to me thoroughly agitated, for the first time I had known
him to be so. In the evening another perplexing piece of
intelligence transpired with regard to Miss Liebenheim, which at
first afflicted every friend of that young lady. It was that she
had been seized with the pains of childbirth, and delivered of a
son, who, however, being born prematurely, did not live many hours.
Scandal, however, was not allowed long to batten upon this
imaginary triumph, for within two hours after the circulation of
this first rumor, followed a second, authenticated, announcing that
Maximilian had appeared with the confessor of the Liebenheim
family, at the residence of the chief magistrate, and there
produced satisfactory proofs of his marriage with Miss Liebenheim,
which had been duly celebrated, though with great secrecy, nearly
eight months before. In our city, as in all the cities of our
country, clandestine marriages, witnessed, perhaps, by two friends
only of the parties, besides the officiating priest, are
exceedingly common. In the mere fact, therefore, taken separately,
there was nothing to surprise us, but, taken in connection with the
general position of the parties, it DID surprise us all; nor could
we conjecture the reason for a step apparently so needless. For,
that Maximilian could have thought it any point of prudence or
necessity to secure the hand of Margaret Liebenheim by a private
marriage, against the final opposition of her grandfather, nobody
who knew the parties, who knew the perfect love which possessed
Miss Liebenbeim, the growing imbecility of her grandfather, or the
utter contempt with which Maximilian regarded him, could for a
moment believe. Altogether, the matter was one of profound
mystery.

Meantime, it rejoiced me that poor Margaret's name had been thus
rescued from the fangs of the scandalmongers. These harpies had
their prey torn from them at the very moment when they were sitting
down to the unhallowed banquet. For this I rejoiced, but else
there was little subject for rejoicing in anything which concerned
poor Margaret. Long she lay in deep insensibility, taking no
notice of anything, rarely opening her eyes, and apparently
unconscious of the revolutions, as they succeeded, of morning or
evening, light or darkness, yesterday or to-day. Great was the
agitation which convulsed the heart of Maximilian during this
period; he walked up and down in the cathedral nearly all day long,
and the ravages which anxiety was working in his physical system
might be read in his face. People felt it an intrusion upon the
sanctity of his grief to look at him too narrowly, and the whole
town sympathized with his situation.

At length a change took place in Margaret, but one which the
medical men announced to Maximilian as boding ill for her recovery.
The wanderings of her mind did not depart, but they altered their
character. She became more agitated; she would start up suddenly,
and strain her eye-sight after some figure which she seemed to see;
then she would apostrophize some person in the most piteous terms,
beseeching him, with streaming eyes, to spare her old grandfather.
"Look, look," she would cry out, "look at his gray hairs! O, sir!
he is but a child; he does not know what he says; and he will soon
be out of the way and in his grave; and very soon, sir, he will
give you no more trouble." Then, again, she would mutter
indistinctly for hours together; sometimes she would cry out
frantically, and say things which terrified the bystanders, and
which the physicians would solemnly caution them how they repeated;
then she would weep, and invoke Maximilian to come and aid her.
But seldom, indeed, did that name pass her lips that she did not
again begin to strain her eyeballs, and start up in bed to watch
some phantom of her poor, fevered heart, as if it seemed vanishing
into some mighty distance.

After nearly seven weeks passed in this agitating state, suddenly,
on one morning, the earliest and the loveliest of dawning spring, a
change was announced to us all as having taken place in Margaret;
but it was a change, alas! that ushered in the last great change of
all. The conflict, which had for so long a period raged within
her, and overthrown her reason, was at an end; the strife was over,
and nature was settling into an everlasting rest. In the course of
the night she had recovered her senses. When the morning light
penetrated through her curtain, she recognized her attendants, made
inquiries as to the month and the day of the month, and then,
sensible that she could not outlive the day, she requested that her
confessor might be summoned.

About an hour and a half the confessor remained alone with her. At
the end of that time he came out, and hastily summoned the
attendants, for Margaret, he said, was sinking into a fainting fit.
The confessor himself might have passed through many a fit, so much
was he changed by the results of this interview. I crossed him
coming out of the house. I spoke to him--I called to him; but he
heard me not--he saw me not. He saw nobody. Onward he strode to
the cathedral, where Maximilian was sure to be found, pacing about
upon the graves. Him he seized by the arm, whispered something
into his ear, and then both retired into one of the many
sequestered chapels in which lights are continually burning. There
they had some conversation, but not very long, for within five
minutes Maximilian strode away to the house in which his young wife
was dying. One step seemed to carry him upstairs. The attendants,
according to the directions they had received from the physicians,
mustered at the head of the stairs to oppose him. But that was
idle: before the rights which he held as a lover and a husband--
before the still more sacred rights of grief, which he carried in
his countenance, all opposition fled like a dream. There was,
besides, a fury in his eye. A motion of his hand waved them off
like summer flies; he entered the room, and once again, for the
last time, he was in company with his beloved.

What passed who could pretend to guess? Something more than two
hours had elapsed, during which Margaret had been able to talk
occasionally, which was known, because at times the attendants
heard the sound of Maximilian's voice evidently in tones of reply
to something which she had said. At the end of that time, a little
bell, placed near the bedside, was rung hastily. A fainting fit
had seized Margaret; but she recovered almost before her women
applied the usual remedies. They lingered, however, a little,
looking at the youthful couple with an interest which no restraints
availed to check. Their hands were locked together, and in
Margaret's eyes there gleamed a farewell light of love, which
settled upon Maximilian, and seemed to indicate that she was
becoming speechless. Just at this moment she made a feeble effort
to draw Maximilian toward her; he bent forward and kissed her with
an anguish that made the most callous weep, and then he whispered
something into her ear, upon which the attendants retired, taking
this as a proof that their presence was a hindrance to a free
communication. But they heard no more talking, and in less than
ten minutes they returned. Maximilian and Margaret still retained
their former position. Their hands were fast locked together; the
same parting ray of affection, the same farewell light of love, was
in the eye of Margaret, and still it settled upon Maximilian. But
her eyes were beginning to grow dim; mists were rapidly stealing
over them. Maximilian, who sat stupefied and like one not in his
right mind, now, at the gentle request of the women, resigned his
seat, for the hand which had clasped his had already relaxed its
hold; the farewell gleam of love had departed. One of the women
closed her eyelids; and there fell asleep forever the loveliest
flower that our city had reared for generations.

The funeral took place on the fourth day after her death. In the
morning of that day, from strong affection--having known her from
an infant--I begged permission to see the corpse. She was in her
coffin; snowdrops and crocuses were laid upon her innocent bosom,
and roses, of that sort which the season allowed, over her person.
These and other lovely symbols of youth, of springtime, and of
resurrection, caught my eye for the first moment; but in the next
it fell upon her face. Mighty God! what a change! what a
transfiguration! Still, indeed, there was the same innocent
sweetness; still there was something of the same loveliness; the
expression still remained; but for the features--all trace of flesh
seemed to have vanished; mere outline of bony structure remained;
mere pencilings and shadowings of what she once had been. This is,
indeed, I exclaimed, "dust to dust--ashes to ashes!"

Maximilian, to the astonishment of everybody, attended the funeral.
It was celebrated in the cathedral. All made way for him, and at
times he seemed collected; at times he reeled like one who was
drunk. He heard as one who hears not; he saw as one in a dream.
The whole ceremony went on by torchlight, and toward the close he
stood like a pillar, motionless, torpid, frozen. But the great
burst of the choir, and the mighty blare ascending from our vast
organ at the closing of the grave, recalled him to himself, and he
strode rapidly homeward. Half an hour after I returned, I was
summoned to his bedroom. He was in bed, calm and collected. What
he said to me I remember as if it had been yesterday, and the very
tone with which he said it, although more than twenty years have
passed since then. He began thus: "I have not long to live"; and
when he saw me start, suddenly awakened into a consciousness that
perhaps he had taken poison, and meant to intimate as much, he
continued: "You fancy I have taken poison;--no matter whether I
have or not; if I have, the poison is such that no antidote will
now avail; or, if they would, you well know that some griefs are of
a kind which leave no opening to any hope. What difference,
therefore, can it make whether I leave this earth to-day, to-
morrow, or the next day? Be assured of this--that whatever I have
determined to do is past all power of being affected by a human
opposition. Occupy yourself not with any fruitless attempts, but
calmly listen to me, else I know what to do." Seeing a suppressed
fury in his eye, notwithstanding I saw also some change stealing
over his features as if from some subtle poison beginning to work
upon his frame, awestruck I consented to listen, and sat still.
"It is well that you do so, for my time is short. Here is my will,
legally drawn up, and you will see that I have committed an immense
property to your discretion. Here, again, is a paper still more
important in my eyes; it is also testamentary, and binds you to
duties which may not be so easy to execute as the disposal of my
property. But now listen to something else, which concerns neither
of these papers. Promise me, in the first place, solemnly, that
whenever I die you will see me buried in the same grave as my wife,
from whose funeral we are just returned. Promise."--I promised.--
"Swear."--I swore.--"Finally, promise me that, when you read this
second paper which I have put into your hands, whatsoever you may
think of it, you will say nothing--publish nothing to the world
until three years shall have passed."--I promised.--"And now
farewell for three hours. Come to me again about ten o'clock, and
take a glass of wine in memory of old times." This he said
laughingly; but even then a dark spasm crossed his face. Yet,
thinking that this might be the mere working of mental anguish
within him, I complied with his desire, and retired. Feeling,
however, but little at ease, I devised an excuse for looking in
upon him about one hour and a half after I had left him. I knocked
gently at his door; there was no answer. I knocked louder; still
no answer. I went in. The light of day was gone, and I could see
nothing. But I was alarmed by the utter stillness of the room. I
listened earnestly, but not a breath could be heard. I rushed back
hastily into the hall for a lamp; I returned; I looked in upon this
marvel of manly beauty, and the first glance informed me that he
and all his splendid endowments had departed forever. He had died,
probably, soon after I left him, and had dismissed me from some
growing instinct which informed him that his last agonies were at
hand.

I took up his two testamentary documents; both were addressed in
the shape of letters to myself. The first was a rapid though
distinct appropriation of his enormous property. General rules
were laid down, upon which the property was to be distributed, but
the details were left to my discretion, and to the guidance of
circumstances as they should happen to emerge from the various
inquiries which it would become necessary to set on foot. This
first document I soon laid aside, both because I found that its
provisions were dependent for their meaning upon the second, and
because to this second document I looked with confidence for a
solution of many mysteries;--of the profound sadness which had,
from the first of my acquaintance with him, possessed a man so
gorgeously endowed as the favorite of nature and fortune; of his
motives for huddling up, in a clandestine manner, that connection
which formed the glory of his life; and possibly (but then I
hesitated) of the late unintelligible murders, which still lay
under as profound a cloud as ever. Much of this WOULD be unveiled--
all might be: and there and then, with the corpse lying beside me
of the gifted and mysterious writer, I seated myself, and read the
following statement:


"MARCH 26, 1817.

"My trial is finished; my conscience, my duty, my honor, are
liberated; my 'warfare is accomplished.' Margaret, my innocent
young wife, I have seen for the last time. Her, the crown that
might have been of my earthly felicity--her, the one temptation to
put aside the bitter cup which awaited me--her, sole seductress (O
innocent seductress!) from the stern duties which my fate had
imposed upon me--her, even her, I have sacrificed.

"Before I go, partly lest the innocent should be brought into
question for acts almost exclusively mine, but still more lest the
lesson and the warning which God, by my hand, has written in blood
upon your guilty walls, should perish for want of its authentic
exposition, hear my last dying avowal, that the murders which have
desolated so many families within your walls, and made the
household hearth no sanctuary, age no charter of protection, are
all due originally to my head, if not always to my hand, as the
minister of a dreadful retribution.

"That account of my history, and my prospects, which you received
from the Russian diplomatist, among some errors of little
importance, is essentially correct. My father was not so
immediately connected with English blood as is there represented.
However, it is true that he claimed descent from an English family
of even higher distinction than that which is assigned in the
Russian statement. He was proud of this English descent, and the
more so as the war with revolutionary France brought out more
prominently than ever the moral and civil grandeur of England.
This pride was generous, but it was imprudent in his situation.
His immediate progenitors had been settled in Italy--at Rome first,
but latterly at Milan; and his whole property, large and scattered,
came, by the progress of the revolution, to stand under French
domination. Many spoliations he suffered; but still he was too
rich to be seriously injured. But he foresaw, in the progress of
events, still greater perils menacing his most capital resources.
Many of the states or princes in Italy were deeply in his debt;
and, in the great convulsions which threatened his country, he saw
that both the contending parties would find a colorable excuse for
absolving themselves from engagements which pressed unpleasantly
upon their finances. In this embarrassment he formed an intimacy
with a French officer of high rank and high principle. My father's
friend saw his danger, and advised him to enter the French service.
In his younger days, my father had served extensively under many
princes, and had found in every other military service a spirit of
honor governing the conduct of the officers. Here only, and for
the first time, he found ruffian manners and universal rapacity.
He could not draw his sword in company with such men, nor in such a
cause. But at length, under the pressure of necessity, he accepted
(or rather bought with an immense bribe) the place of a commissary
to the French forces in Italy. With this one resource, eventually
he succeeded in making good the whole of his public claims upon the
Italian states. These vast sums he remitted, through various
channels, to England, where he became proprietor in the funds to an
immense amount. Incautiously, however, something of this
transpired, and the result was doubly unfortunate; for, while his
intentions were thus made known as finally pointing to England,
which of itself made him an object of hatred and suspicion, it also
diminished his means of bribery. These considerations, along with
another, made some French officers of high rank and influence the
bitter enemies of my father. My mother, whom he had married when
holding a brigadier-general's commission in the Austrian service,
was, by birth and by religion, a Jewess. She was of exquisite
beauty, and had been sought in Morganatic marriage by an archduke
of the Austrian family; but she had relied upon this plea, that
hers was the purest and noblest blood among all Jewish families--
that her family traced themselves, by tradition and a vast series
of attestations under the hands of the Jewish high priests, to the
Maccabees, and to the royal houses of Judea; and that for her it
would be a degradation to accept even of a sovereign prince on the
terms of such marriage. This was no vain pretension of
ostentatious vanity. It was one which had been admitted as valid
for time immemorial in Transylvania and adjacent countries, where
my mother's family were rich and honored, and took their seat among
the dignitaries of the land. The French officers I have alluded
to, without capacity for anything so dignified as a deep passion,
but merely in pursuit of a vagrant fancy that would, on the next
day, have given place to another equally fleeting, had dared to
insult my mother with proposals the most licentious--proposals as
much below her rank and birth, as, at any rate, they would have
been below her dignity of mind and her purity. These she had
communicated to my father, who bitterly resented the chains of
subordination which tied up his hands from avenging his injuries.
Still his eye told a tale which his superiors could brook as little
as they could the disdainful neglect of his wife. More than one
had been concerned in the injuries to my father and mother; more
than one were interested in obtaining revenge. Things could be
done in German towns, and by favor of old German laws or usages,
which even in France could not have been tolerated. This my
father's enemies well knew, but this my father also knew; and he
endeavored to lay down his office of commissary. That, however,
was a favor which he could not obtain. He was compelled to serve
on the German campaign then commencing, and on the subsequent one
of Friedland and Eylau. Here he was caught in some one of the
snares laid for him; first trepanned into an act which violated
some rule of the service; and then provoked into a breach of
discipline against the general officer who had thus trepanned him.
Now was the long-sought opportunity gained, and in that very
quarter of Germany best fitted for improving it. My father was
thrown into prison in your city, subjected to the atrocious
oppression of your jailer, and the more detestable oppression of
your local laws. The charges against him were thought even to
affect his life, and he was humbled into suing for permission to
send for his wife and children. Already, to his proud spirit, it
was punishment enough that he should be reduced to sue for favor to
one of his bitterest foes. But it was no part of their plan to
refuse THAT. By way of expediting my mother's arrival, a military
courier, with every facility for the journey, was forwarded to her
without delay. My mother, her two daughters, and myself, were then
residing in Venice. I had, through the aid of my father's
connections in Austria, been appointed in the imperial service, and
held a high commission for my age. But, on my father's marching
northward with the French army, I had been recalled as an
indispensable support to my mother. Not that my years could have
made me such, for I had barely accomplished my twelfth year; but my
premature growth, and my military station, had given me
considerable knowledge of the world and presence of mind.

"Our journey I pass over; but as I approach your city, that
sepulcher of honor and happiness to my poor family, my heart beats
with frantic emotions. Never do I see that venerable dome of your
minster from the forest, but I curse its form, which reminds me of
what we then surveyed for many a mile as we traversed the forest.
For leagues before we approached the city, this object lay before
us in relief upon the frosty blue sky; and still it seemed never to
increase. Such was the complaint of my little sister Mariamne.
Most innocent child! would that it never had increased for thy
eyes, but remained forever at a distance! That same hour began the
series of monstrous indignities which terminated the career of my
ill-fated family. As we drew up to the city gates, the officer who
inspected the passports, finding my mother and sisters described as
Jewesses, which in my mother's ears (reared in a region where Jews
are not dishonored) always sounded a title of distinction, summoned
a subordinate agent, who in coarse terms demanded his toll. We
presumed this to be a road tax for the carriage and horses, but we
were quickly undeceived; a small sum was demanded for each of my
sisters and my mother, as for so many head of cattle. I, fancying
some mistake, spoke to the man temperately, and, to do him justice,
he did not seem desirous of insulting us; but he produced a printed
board, on which, along with the vilest animals, Jews and Jewesses
were rated at so much a head. While we were debating the point,
the officers of the gate wore a sneering smile upon their faces--
the postilions were laughing together; and this, too, in the
presence of three creatures whose exquisite beauty, in different
styles, agreeably to their different ages, would have caused
noblemen to have fallen down and worshiped. My mother, who had
never yet met with any flagrant insult on account of her national
distinctions, was too much shocked to be capable of speaking. I
whispered to her a few words, recalling her to her native dignity
of mind, paid the money, and we drove to the prison. But the hour
was past at which we could be admitted, and, as Jewesses, my mother
and sisters could not be allowed to stay in the city; they were to
go into the Jewish quarter, a part of the suburb set apart for
Jews, in which it was scarcely possible to obtain a lodging
tolerably clean. My father, on the next day, we found, to our
horror, at the point of death. To my mother he did not tell the
worst of what he had endured. To me he told that, driven to
madness by the insults offered to him, he had upbraided the court-
martial with their corrupt propensities, and had even mentioned
that overtures had been made to him for quashing the proceedings in
return for a sum of two millions of francs; and that his sole
reason for not entertaining the proposal was his distrust of those
who made it. 'They would have taken my money,' said he, 'and then
found a pretext for putting me to death, that I might tell no
secrets.' This was too near the truth to be tolerated; in concert
with the local authorities, the military enemies of my father
conspired against him--witnesses were suborned; and, finally, under
some antiquated law of the place, he was subjected, in secret, to a
mode of torture which still lingers in the east of Europe.

"He sank under the torture and the degradation. I, too,
thoughtlessly, but by a natural movement of filial indignation,
suffered the truth to escape me in conversing with my mother. And
she--;but I will preserve the regular succession of things. My
father died; but he had taken such measures, in concert with me,
that his enemies should never benefit by his property. Meantime my
mother and sisters had closed my father's eyes; had attended his
remains to the grave; and in every act connected with this last sad
rite had met with insults and degradations too mighty for human
patience. My mother, now become incapable of self-command, in the
fury of her righteous grief, publicly and in court denounced the
conduct of the magistracy--taxed some of them with the vilest
proposals to herself--taxed them as a body with having used
instruments of torture upon my father; and, finally, accused them
of collusion with the French military oppressors of the district.
This last was a charge under which they quailed; for by that time
the French had made themselves odious to all who retained a spark
of patriotic feeling. My heart sank within me when I looked up at
the bench, this tribunal of tyrants, all purple or livid with rage;
when I looked at them alternately and at my noble mother with her
weeping daughters--these so powerless, those so basely vindictive,
and locally so omnipotent. Willingly I would have sacrificed all
my wealth for a simple permission to quit this infernal city with
my poor female relations safe and undishonored. But far other were
the intentions of that incensed magistracy. My mother was
arrested, charged with some offense equal to petty treason, or
scandalum magnatum, or the sowing of sedition; and, though what she
said was true, where, alas! was she to look for evidence? Here was
seen the want of gentlemen. Gentlemen, had they been even equally
tyrannical, would have recoiled with shame from taking vengeance on
a woman. And what a vengeance! O heavenly powers! that I should
live to mention such a thing! Man that is born of woman, to
inflict upon woman personal scourging on the bare back, and through
the streets at noonday! Even for Christian women the punishment
was severe which the laws assigned to the offense in question. But
for Jewesses, by one of the ancient laws against that persecuted
people, far heavier and more degrading punishments were annexed to
almost every offense. What else could be looked for in a city
which welcomed its Jewish guests by valuing them at its gates as
brute beasts? Sentence was passed, and the punishment was to be
inflicted on two separate days, with an interval between each--
doubtless to prolong the tortures of mind, but under a vile
pretense of alleviating the physical torture. Three days after
would come the first day of punishment. My mother spent the time
in reading her native Scriptures; she spent it in prayer and in
musing; while her daughters clung and wept around her day and
night--groveling on the ground at the feet of any people in
authority that entered their mother's cell. That same interval--
how was it passed by me? Now mark, my friend. Every man in
office, or that could be presumed to bear the slightest influence,
every wife, mother, sister, daughter of such men, I besieged
morning, noon, and night. I wearied them with my supplications. I
humbled myself to the dust; I, the haughtiest of God's creatures,
knelt and prayed to them for the sake of my mother. I besought
them that I might undergo the punishment ten times over in her
stead. And once or twice I DID obtain the encouragement of a few
natural tears--given more, however, as I was told, to my piety than
to my mother's deserts. But rarely was I heard out with patience;
and from some houses repelled with personal indignities. The day
came: I saw my mother half undressed by the base officials; I heard
the prison gates expand; I heard the trumpets of the magistracy
sound. She had warned me what to do; I had warned myself. Would I
sacrifice a retribution sacred and comprehensive, for the momentary
triumph over an individual? If not, let me forbear to look out of
doors; for I felt that in the selfsame moment in which I saw the
dog of an executioner raise his accursed hand against my mother,
swifter than the lightning would my dagger search his heart. When
I heard the roar of the cruel mob, I paused--endured--forbore. I
stole out by by-lanes of the city from my poor exhausted sisters,
whom I left sleeping in each other's innocent arms, into the
forest. There I listened to the shouting populace; there even I
fancied that I could trace my poor mother's route by the course of
the triumphant cries. There, even then, even then, I made--O
silent forest! thou heardst me when I made--a vow that I have kept
too faithfully. Mother, thou art avenged: sleep, daughter of
Jerusalem! for at length the oppressor sleeps with thee. And thy
poor son has paid, in discharge of his vow, the forfeit of his own
happiness, of a paradise opening upon earth, of a heart as innocent
as thine, and a face as fair.

"I returned, and found my mother returned. She slept by starts,
but she was feverish and agitated; and when she awoke and first saw
me, she blushed, as if I could think that real degradation had
settled upon her. Then it was that I told her of my vow. Her eyes
were lambent with fierce light for a moment; but, when I went on
more eagerly to speak of my hopes and projects, she called me to
her--kissed me, and whispered: 'Oh, not so, my son! think not of
me--think not of vengeance--think only of poor Berenice and
Mariamne.' Aye, that thought WAS startling. Yet this magnanimous
and forbearing mother, as I knew by the report of our one faithful
female servant, had, in the morning, during her bitter trial,
behaved as might have become a daughter of Judas Maccabaeus: she
had looked serenely upon the vile mob, and awed even them by her
serenity; she had disdained to utter a shriek when the cruel lash
fell upon her fair skin. There is a point that makes the triumph
over natural feelings of pain easy or not easy--the degree in which
we count upon the sympathy of the bystanders. My mother had it not
in the beginning; but, long before the end, her celestial beauty,
the divinity of injured innocence, the pleading of common womanhood
in the minds of the lowest class, and the reaction of manly feeling
in the men, had worked a great change in the mob. Some began now
to threaten those who had been active in insulting her. The
silence of awe and respect succeeded to noise and uproar; and
feelings which they scarcely understood, mastered the rude rabble
as they witnessed more and more the patient fortitude of the
sufferer. Menaces began to rise toward the executioner. Things
wore such an aspect that the magistrates put a sudden end to the
scene.

"That day we received permission to go home to our poor house in
the Jewish quarter. I know not whether you are learned enough in
Jewish usages to be aware that in every Jewish house, where old
traditions are kept up, there is one room consecrated to confusion;
a room always locked up and sequestered from vulgar use, except on
occasions of memorable affliction, where everything is purposely in
disorder--broken--shattered--mutilated: to typify, by symbols
appalling to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled on
Jerusalem, and the ravages of the boar within the vineyards of
Judea. My mother, as a Hebrew princess, maintained all traditional
customs. Even in this wretched suburb she had her 'chamber of
desolation.' There it was that I and my sisters heard her last
words. The rest of her sentence was to be carried into effect
within a week. She, meantime, had disdained to utter any word of
fear; but that energy of self-control had made the suffering but
the more bitter. Fever and dreadful agitation had succeeded. Her
dreams showed sufficiently to us, who watched her couch, that
terror for the future mingled with the sense of degradation for the
past. Nature asserted her rights. But the more she shrank from
the suffering, the more did she proclaim how severe it had been,
and consequently how noble the self-conquest. Yet, as her weakness
increased, so did her terror; until I besought her to take comfort,
assuring her that, in case any attempt should be made to force her
out again to public exposure, I would kill the man who came to
execute the order--that we would all die together--and there would
be a common end to her injuries and her fears. She was reassured
by what I told her of my belief that no future attempt would be
made upon her. She slept more tranquilly--but her fever increased;
and slowly she slept away into the everlasting sleep which knows of
no to-morrow.

"Here came a crisis in my fate. Should I stay and attempt to
protect my sisters? But, alas! what power had I to do so among our
enemies? Rachael and I consulted; and many a scheme we planned.
Even while we consulted, and the very night after my mother had
been committed to the Jewish burying ground, came an officer,
bearing an order for me to repair to Vienna. Some officer in the
French army, having watched the transaction respecting my parents,
was filled with shame and grief. He wrote a statement of the whole
to an Austrian officer of rank, my father's friend, who obtained
from the emperor an order, claiming me as a page of his own, and an
officer in the household service. O heavens! what a neglect that
it did not include my sisters! However, the next best thing was
that I should use my influence at the imperial court to get them
passed to Vienna. This I did, to the utmost of my power. But
seven months elapsed before I saw the emperor. If my applications
ever met his eye he might readily suppose that your city, my
friend, was as safe a place as another for my sisters. Nor did I
myself know all its dangers. At length, with the emperor's leave
of absence, I returned. And what did I find? Eight months had
passed, and the faithful Rachael had died. The poor sisters,
clinging together, but now utterly bereft of friends, knew not
which way to turn. In this abandonment they fell into the
insidious hands of the ruffian jailer. My eldest sister, Berenice,
the stateliest and noblest of beauties, had attracted this
ruffian's admiration while she was in the prison with her mother.
And when I returned to your city, armed with the imperial passports
for all, I found that Berenice had died in the villain's custody;
nor could I obtain anything beyond a legal certificate of her
death. And, finally, the blooming, laughing Mariamne, she also had
died--and of affliction for the loss of her sister. You, my
friend, had been absent upon your travels during the calamitous
history I have recited. You had seen neither my father nor my
mother. But you came in time to take under your protection, from
the abhorred wretch the jailer, my little broken-hearted Mariamne.
And when sometimes you fancied that you had seen me under other
circumstances, in her it was, my dear friend, and in her features
that you saw mine.

"Now was the world a desert to me. I cared little, in the way of
love, which way I turned. But in the way of hatred I cared
everything. I transferred myself to the Russian service, with the
view of gaining some appointment on the Polish frontier, which
might put it in my power to execute my vow of destroying all the
magistrates of your city. War, however, raged, and carried me into
far other regions. It ceased, and there was little prospect that
another generation would see it relighted; for the disturber of
peace was a prisoner forever, and all nations were exhausted. Now,
then, it became necessary that I should adopt some new mode for
executing my vengeance; and the more so, because annually some were
dying of those whom it was my mission to punish. A voice ascended
to me, day and night, from the graves of my father and mother,
calling for vengeance before it should be too late.

I took my measures thus: Many Jews were present at Waterloo. From
among these, all irritated against Napoleon for the expectations he
had raised, only to disappoint, by his great assembly of Jews at
Paris, I selected eight, whom I knew familiarly as men hardened by
military experience against the movements of pity. With these as
my beagles, I hunted for some time in your forest before opening my
regular campaign; and I am surprised that you did not hear of the
death which met the executioner--him I mean who dared to lift his
hand against my mother. This man I met by accident in the forest;
and I slew him. I talked with the wretch, as a stranger at first,
upon the memorable case of the Jewish lady. Had he relented, had
he expressed compunction, I might have relented. But far
otherwise: the dog, not dreaming to whom he spoke, exulted; he--
But why repeat the villain's words? I cut him to pieces. Next I
did this: My agents I caused to matriculate separately at the
college. They assumed the college dress. And now mark the
solution of that mystery which caused such perplexity. Simply as
students we all had an unsuspected admission at any house. Just
then there was a common practice, as you will remember, among the
younger students, of going out a masking--that is, of entering
houses in the academic dress, and with the face masked. This
practice subsisted even during the most intense alarm from the
murderers; for the dress of the students was supposed to bring
protection along with it. But, even after suspicion had connected
itself with this dress, it was sufficient that I should appear
unmasked at the head of the maskers, to insure them a friendly
reception. Hence the facility with which death was inflicted, and
that unaccountable absence of any motion toward an alarm. I took
hold of my victim, and he looked at me with smiling security. Our
weapons were hid under our academic robes; and even when we drew
them out, and at the moment of applying them to the threat, they
still supposed our gestures to be part of the pantomime we were
performing. Did I relish this abuse of personal confidence in
myself? No--I loathed it, and I grieved for its necessity; but my
mother, a phantom not seen with bodily eyes, but ever present to my
mind, continually ascended before me; and still I shouted aloud to
my astounded victim, 'This comes from the Jewess! Hound of hounds!
Do you remember the Jewess whom you dishonored, and the oaths which
you broke in order that you might dishonor her, and the righteous
law which you violated, and the cry of anguish from her son which
you scoffed at?' Who I was, what I avenged, and whom, I made every
man aware, and every woman, before I punished them. The details of
the cases I need not repeat. One or two I was obliged, at the
beginning, to commit to my Jews. The suspicion was thus, from the
first, turned aside by the notoriety of my presence elsewhere; but
I took care that none suffered who had not either been upon the
guilty list of magistrates who condemned the mother, or of those
who turned away with mockery from the supplication of the son.

"It pleased God, however, to place a mighty temptation in my path,
which might have persuaded me to forego all thoughts of vengeance,
to forget my vow, to forget the voices which invoked me from the
grave. This was Margaret Liebenheim. Ah! how terrific appeared my
duty of bloody retribution, after her angel's face and angel's
voice had calmed me. With respect to her grandfather, strange it
is to mention, that never did my innocent wife appear so lovely as
precisely in the relation of granddaughter. So beautiful was her
goodness to the old man, and so divine was the childlike innocence
on her part, contrasted with the guilty recollections associated
with him--for he was among the guiltiest toward my mother--still I
delayed HIS punishment to the last; and, for his child's sake, I
would have pardoned him--nay, I had resolved to do so, when a
fierce Jew, who had a deep malignity toward this man, swore that he
would accomplish HIS vengeance at all events, and perhaps might be
obliged to include Margaret in the ruin, unless I adhered to the
original scheme. Then I yielded; for circumstances armed this man
with momentary power. But the night fixed on was one in which I
had reason to know that my wife would be absent; for so I had
myself arranged with her, and the unhappy counter-arrangement I do
not yet understand. Let me add, that the sole purpose of my
clandestine marriage was to sting her grandfather's mind with the
belief that HIS family had been dishonored, even as he had
dishonored mine. He learned, as I took care that he should, that
his granddaughter carried about with her the promises of a mother,
and did not know that she had the sanction of a wife. This
discovery made him, in one day, become eager for the marriage he
had previously opposed; and this discovery also embittered the
misery of his death. At that moment I attempted to think only of
my mother's wrongs; but, in spite of all I could do, this old man
appeared to me in the light of Margaret's grandfather--and, had I
been left to myself, he would have been saved. As it was, never
was horror equal to mine when I met her flying to his succor. I
had relied upon her absence; and the misery of that moment, when
her eye fell upon me in the very act of seizing her grandfather,
far transcended all else that I have suffered in these terrific
scenes. She fainted in my arms, and I and another carried her
upstairs and procured water. Meantime her grandfather had been
murdered, even while Margaret fainted. I had, however, under the
fear of discovery, though never anticipating a reencounter with
herself, forestalled the explanation requisite in such a case to
make my conduct intelligible. I had told her, under feigned names,
the story of my mother and my sisters. She knew their wrongs: she
had heard me contend for the right of vengeance. Consequently, in
our parting interview, one word only was required to place myself
in a new position to her thoughts. I needed only to say I was that
son; that unhappy mother, so miserably degraded and outraged, was
mine.

"As to the jailer, he was met by a party of us. Not suspecting
that any of us could be connected with the family, he was led to
talk of the most hideous details with regard to my poor Berenice.
The child had not, as had been insinuated, aided her own
degradation, but had nobly sustained the dignity of her sex and her
family. Such advantages as the monster pretended to have gained
over her--sick, desolate, and latterly delirious--were, by his own
confession, not obtained without violence. This was too much.
Forty thousand lives, had he possessed them, could not have
gratified my thirst for revenge. Yet, had he but showed courage,
he should have died the death of a soldier. But the wretch showed
cowardice the most abject, and--,but you know his fate.

"Now, then, all is finished, and human nature is avenged. Yet, if
you complain of the bloodshed and the terror, think of the wrongs
which created my rights; think of the sacrifice by which I gave a
tenfold strength to those rights; think of the necessity for a
dreadful concussion and shock to society, in order to carry my
lesson into the councils of princes.

"This will now have been effected. And ye, victims of dishonor,
will be glorified in your deaths; ye will not have suffered in
vain, nor died without a monument. Sleep, therefore, sister
Berenice--sleep, gentle Mariamne, in peace. And thou, noble
mother, let the outrages sown in thy dishonor, rise again and
blossom in wide harvests of honor for the women of thy afflicted
race. Sleep, daughters of Jerusalem, in the sanctity of your
sufferings. And thou, if it be possible, even more beloved
daughter of a Christian fold, whose company was too soon denied to
him in life, open thy grave to receive HIM, who, in the hour of
death, wishes to remember no title which he wore on earth but that
of thy chosen and adoring lover,

"MAXIMILIAN."