The Genius (Carl Grosse)/Chapter 13
CHAP. XIII.
I will now proceed to give a faithful extract of that part of Elmira's history, and use as far as a lively imagination permits it, her own expressions.
—"I awoke, half insensible, from that long swoon, and found myself in a coffin. Several others stood about me, and the putrescent exhalations of the vault were the first impression my senses received. A pale glimmering lamp hung from the middle of the dread abode, and keenly penetrated my mind with all its concomitant terrors.
"An awful situation! I knew not what to do. Was I to call out for help, or quietly wait the issue? The lamp told me, I was in a place not intirely forsaken by men, and a general lassitude and relaxation of strength, were the next torturing sensation I felt. But they would not leave me time for long reflection. Soon I heard some voices approaching from a gallery, whose opening I could faintly descry. I could even understand the topic and expressions of their talk. Some abused the inhuman cruelty of Don Carlos; others condemned my imprudence; while a few excused me, saying it was very natural for a weak female to become under similar circumstances, the victim of an artful and consummate villain. After a stoppage of several minutes at the farther end of the gallery, I saw a train of persons of both sexes, file off through the avenue, and enter the vault with piteous and sympathizing faces. Some were carrying candles, phials and glasses, others bore linen and other articles of female vesture. Looking about at the glare of reinforced light, I saw myself wrapt up in woollen, and several vases standing around me.
"When they discovered me fitting erect in the bier, they uttered several shouts of joy. In a few seconds they changed the shroud into a neat and comfortable dress, removed me into a spacious and airy apartment, where I was put into a warm and well-perfumed bed. Decency made the greater part of my visitors retire, leaving only two women who staid with me, till I had quite recovered.
"They then congratulated me on my deliverance, and praised God for having made them the instruments of his divine benefit.
—"Thank Heaven with us, my Lady," began one of them, "for having been rescued from hands at once cruel and perfidious, to fall into ours."
—"What cruel and perfidious hands do you mean?" returned I with astonishment.
—"Those of your pretended lover, Don Carlos de Grandez."
—"Hold thy calumnious tongue, wretched creature," interrupted I, "and distil not thy poison on a name I adore!"
—"Not so warm, my Lady," replied she quite coolly; "it will only require a few days to convert you to our opinion. We all are members of a society, who make it their duty to relieve the suffering and the wretched, and to obliterate, if possible, the very recollection of their misfortunes—and, indeed, my Lady, we thought ourselves entitled to your best thanks."—
"Circumstanced as I was, what answer could I have made to the vile tools of a mysterious vengeance, after such a declaration? I was silent, and having resolved to keep all my ideas and thoughts to myself, only became their sport, without reserve. It was evident, in whose hands I had fallen, and what I had heard of the mystic Cabal on my nuptial day, now presented itself in stronger colors to my mind. Without being able to dive to the bottom of the sense of this phenomenon, its flight concatenation of results, was enough to corroborate the truth of my conjectures.
"If there was a single resource left, to disentangle myself from their snares, it could only be such an one, as they had not the least suspicion of my meditating. I feigned therefore to become gradually more attentive and yielding to their various insinuations, I seemed, without affectation, to alter my mind, and if I fought solitude, they only fancied it would prove the more auspicious to their designs. With inward reluctance I embraced all the plans they proposed to divert me, and make me forget as they called him a treacherous, dissipated husband. A light fort of sprightliness, which I never suffered to border on petulance, gave a varnish of nature to my new modelled deportment, and fortified them in their presumption, while it gave me hopes of seizing some lucky moment, when being less guarded, I might deceive their vigilance and give them the slip.
"Meanwhile a crowd of very gay ladies and gentlemen came to pay me frequent visits. At last they persuaded me to accompany them on a nightly excursion to an adjacent manor-house, which, on my arrival, they told me, was destined to be my temporary residence. The locality was, indeed, charming, and the garden large and arranged with taste. Walking became, therefore, my principal pastime and amusement. Although I never was without company, or at least without attendants, who kept an eye upon me at a distance, and the happy period of my deliverance was yet perhaps very remote, still I occupied myself with a variety of plans, to bring it imperceptibly nearer.
"At the same time care was taken to keep off every thing that could render me irksome. Rural fêtes, the freedom of a select company of flattering and insinuating women and amiable young men, were to finish with laughter and graces what had been planned and begun under such serious circumstances. All breathed a general, half-apparent and delicately concealed effort to please me, and to anticipate my wishes before they even existed.
"There actually were moments, in which I felt myself led, as it were by enchantment, to return their friendly advances. I became more candid, and had not the few hours of their vigilance weakened the impression of those of their assiduity and unremitting attention, I could scarce have defended myself from yielding to a delirium which must have plunged me into everlasting misery.
"Among the young men, who surrounded me, was one of such seemingly perfect accomplishments, both of person and mind, of such a treacherous and seducing fire, as ultimately rendered him pliable to all my wishes. It was he who seemed to be the foremost to make pretensions to my favor; he only lived in my looks, and was happy or unhappy in the various whims and changes of my humor. Never were all the arts of insidious seduction more strongly combined in one object; each circumstance concurred to his advantage; all that the company said or did, helped to raise and support his influence, and convinced by time and his invariable solicitude of the genial purity of his passion, I should inevitably have fallen in the long run, had not a little incident snatch me for ever from his hopes, and restored me to myself and my projects.
He had a small Bolognese lap-dog, and I became so uncommonly fond of this canine charmer, that I oftentimes gave him to understand, its possession would be very grateful to my liking. At first he seemed rather unwilling to part with the favourite animal, till one forenoon he promised to surrender him the same evening. Some time previous to the hour in which my visitors were wont to pay me their homage, I took a walk towards the large bower in the garden, when softly tripping behind the verdure, I perceived the young suitor at the entrance of the former, busily employed with his little dog. Curiosity made me stop and peep through the thick foliage, when I observed him in the act of tying a collar round the creature's neck, and having done this part of the business, he kissed him, softly whispering these words: "Poor Corrulla; so you and. I must part for a while: but always will I love thee better than the prey I shall catch by the means of thy decoying."
These words penetrated my feelings with the keenness of a dagger; insulted honor bled, and offended self-love called aloud far vengeance: but prudence hastening to my assistance, prevented me from breaking out in a torrent of invectives and reproaches against the atrocious villain who meditated nothing less than my dishonour and ruin. He should have seen an Elmira, quite different from her who had hitherto so kindly condescended to permit his visits, but this gratuitous discovery by holding up to my reason all the dangers which threatened me, afforded a more salutary lesson, than all the effects resulting from the momentary gratification of an hasty revenge, which would only have served to whet the malice of an incorrigible miscreant.
"I returned to my apartment, deeply sensible of the necessity of keeping up the appearances of the part I had began to act. I forced myself back within the limits of that placid serenity, that ingenuous frankness and unassuming simplicity, which those that know me, have always remarked in my real character. The evening came, my fashionable visitors appeared as, usual, and the designing beau delivered up his lap dog with all the ceremonials that can possibly attend the surrender of some great and valuable sacrifice. I received the gift with all the pleasantness of conscious obligation, and with all the airs of remunerating friendship. The traiterous seducer smiled contentment and approbation, and soon afterwards had the assurance of claiming the purposed reward for his present. But forewarned as I was, opportunities were never wanting on my part, to evade his tender threats and loathsome caresses.
"Thus some weeks again elapsed, without my having any greater prospect than I had the first day, of effectuating my flight. The danger became daily more urgent; I neither knew the place nor its environs, and was seldom left an hour unguarded. At last I attempted, in the face of a thousand difficulties, that, which under more favourable circumstances I had never felt myself bold enough to execute. A few minutes previous to a fête that was to be given in honour of me, I seized an auspicious moment to deceive the vigilance of my keepers, went into the garden, where by means of a rope-ladder, I ascended a walnut-tree by throwing the rope over one of its lowermost branches, and removing the ladder, climbed up as high as I could towards the top, and hid myself in the thick green of its leaves. Soon after a solemn procession of my mystic hosts drew near the spot where a throne was erected for me to receive them, but the bird had fled, and I had the pleasure, from my loftier feat to witness their rage, their disappointment and unsuccessful searches.
"Late at night, I descended from the tree by the same operation which I had used to get up to it. A small path soon led me to a village, at the distance of several leagues from my late residence, where darkness and chance farther favoured me in my enterprize.
"Here I exchanged my cloathes, blackened my face, and made my way begging to the next town, where I stopped to procure myself the means necessary for defraying the expences of my journey through the rest of Spain to France.
"It is a circumstance necessary to be mentioned here, that my own jewels and those which Don Carlos presented me with on my wedding-day at St. Jago, had been given by the latter, on my supposed death, to the Superior of the monks, for prayers to be said by the fathers for the repose of my departed soul. These jewels had been restored to me, soon after my resurrection in the vault, probably through the influence of the Cabal, with whom that chief of holy friars, was no doubt leagued. I had taken them with me the moment I went to make my escape, and disposing of some of them at the first town I reached in my flight, the produce in money was amply sufficient to answer every exigency in the farther prosecution of my journey. I now bought a neat travelling-dress made up in the newest French fashion, and on my safe arrival at Marseilles found a good market for the remainder of my valuables. The fum arising from their sale enabled me to purchase this rural retreat, where nothing more than the presence of my Carlos is wanting, to terminate a short life, in the endearing sweets of conjugal happiness and peaceful tranquillity.
"Many times have I written from this place, to my dear Carlos, to his and my friends, but no answer having ever been received, I conclude, that my letters must be intercepted by the machinations of that ruthless Cabal. There is hardly an office of the state, from the highest department to the lowest, in which those wretches have not accomplices or venal spies; this I could collect from the conversation of the company in whose hands I fell after my trance in the mansion of the dead.
"I have no doubt, but their diabolical art had made them infuse some poison in the festive nuptial cup, which after I had quaffed it to implore happiness on our union, yielded slowly the dreadful effect of a lethargic slumber, made to imitate dissolution and to occasion this cruel parting. From the same source, I have also been able to learn, on overhearing them in their secret haunts, that while my Carlos was lying senseless on the floor, dilirious from the grief occasioned by so sudden a loss, the monsters substituted a putrid corpse in lieu of my body to hasten the burial.
"I am well aware, that my return to Spain after deceiving those relentless strangers, would be instant death to me, perhaps without seeing once more a cherished husband, for whose sake I should have braved such a danger. The duty and care I owe to his infant, and the sickly state of my health, bid me stay in this lonely retreat, where I am writing this history for his information. To send it to Spain would be folly, as the manuscript would share the same fate as the many letters I have written to him already. Two years longer will I wait, to see, if by some unforeseen accident, none of my correspondence will fall into his hands, and make him fly to cheer the melancholy which warps the decline of hapless days—should this last hope, like so many others, be frustrated—or should death snatch me from this world, before the expiration of the limited term—I hereby solemnly conjure the municipal officers of this place, to give all the publicity they can to these memoirs, in the journals and news-papers of France and Spain, in order that my dear husband, Don Carlos de Grandez, may learn these details so interesting to his honor, his peace and happiness."
These are the posthumous remains of the history of my beloved, faithful and never to be forgotten Elmira. How wonderful are the turns of human fate! How much reason did not not I find here, had I been the greatest infidel living, to adore and admire the wisdom of an all-directing Providence!