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 memorable4 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 awakened5, but in all analogous6 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 Christian7 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 outraged10, 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 melancholy11 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 devoted12 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 repelling13 them; while the city in its more stationary14 and native classes would very soon have manifested THEIR awful sense of things, of the hideous15 insecurity for life, and of the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearths17 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 undone18 of all that human foresight19 could suggest, or human ingenuity20 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 awe21, the sense of mystery, when ten cases of total extermination22, applied23 to separate households, had occurred, in every one of which these precautionary aids had failed to yield the slightest assistance. The horror, the perfect frenzy24 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 intelligible25 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 motives27 of the murderers. But, as it was, when, in ten separate cases of exterminating28 carnage, the astounded29 police, after an examination the most searching, pursued from day to day, and almost exhausting the patience by the minuteness of the investigation30, had finally pronounced that no attempt apparently31 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 misery32 of fear fell upon the population, so much the worse than any anguish33 of a beleaguered34 city that is awaiting the storming fury of a victorious35 enemy, by how much the shadowy, the uncertain, the infinite, is at all times more potent36 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 calamity37 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, utterly38 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 frail39 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 chaos40 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 eloquent41; 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 narrative42; as I had still more eminently44, 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 possessed45, 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 gentry46, 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 diplomacy47 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 privately49 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 cavalry50 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 Moorish51 complexion52, though, after all, THAT is not of a deeper tinge53 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 inevitable55, 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 tumult56 of our European history since 1805, have interfered57 (as you may suppose) with the cultivation58 of his mind; for he entered the cavalry service of a German power when a mere3 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 prodigious59 favorite with the whole imperial family, and even now is only in his twenty-second year. As to his accomplishments60, 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 abode62 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 negotiations65 advanced so rapidly that all was closed before the end of September. And, when once that consummation was attained66, I, that previously67 had breathed no syllable68 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 drooped69 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 crest70 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 stagnant71 society; every tongue was busy in discussing the marvelous young Englishman from morning to night; every female fancy was busy in depicting73 the personal appearance of this gay apparition74.
On his arrival at my house, I became sensible of a truth which I had observed some years before. The commonplace maxim61 is, that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high. This, which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally75; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify76 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 unlimited77 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 conspicuous78 splendor79. 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 lookout80 for whatever eminence81 there might be of grandeur82 in his personal appearance; while, on the other hand, this existed in such excess, so far transcending83 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 supremacy84 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 quelling85 all perturbation. My composure was restored in a moment. I looked steadily86 at him. We both bowed. And, at the moment when he raised his head from that inclination87, 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 serene88 and gentle emotions; but it surprised, and at the same time filled me more almost with consternation89 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 laden90 with inspirations of woe91.
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 eminent43 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 pretensions92 under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He was not naturally of a reserved turn; far from it. His disposition94 had been open, frank, and confiding95, originally; and his roving, adventurous96 life, of which considerably97 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 demeanor98, 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 faltered100 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 syllables101, 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 distressing103 to all who participated in them, either as actors or spectators. Certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly104 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 admiration105? Yes; one at least there was in whose bosom106 the spell of all-conquering passion soon thawed107 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 rapture109 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 trepidation110 and embarrassment111 which distressed112 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 homage114 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 tempting115 her to put forth116 her buoyant instincts. He, on the other hand, now first found the realization117 of his dreams, and for a mere possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated118, fearing, however, that in his own case it might prove a chimera120, 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 wrought121 in the whole nature of Ferdinand von Harrelstein. He was the son of a German baron122; 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 prospect123 of obtaining a commission, under flattering auspices124, 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 annually125 more important in all the artillery126 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 amiable127 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 ardor128 of his ardent129 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 mingled130 with respect. Before the arrival of Mr. Wyndham he had shown himself generous, indeed magnanimous. But never was there so painful an overthrow131 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, agitated132; sometimes he broke out into maniacal133 movements of wrath, invoking134 some absent person, praying, beseeching135, menacing some air-wove phantom136; sometimes he slunk into solitary137 corners, muttering to himself, and with gestures sorrowfully significant, or with tones and fragments of expostulation that moved the most callous138 to compassion139. Still he turned a deaf ear to the only practical counsel that had a chance for reaching his ears. Like a bird under the fascination140 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 catastrophe141. "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, nay142, almost tempting temptation. Try the effects of absence, though but for a month." The good father even made an overture143 toward imposing144 a penance145 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 offenses146 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 snares148 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 consolation149, and from scorn—from each of these alike the poor stricken deer "recoiled150 into the wilderness152;" 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, alas153! no: still he returned to the haunts of his ruined happiness and his buried hopes, at each return looking more like the wreck154 of his former self; and once I heard a penetrating155 monk156 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 guilt157."
So stood matters among us. January was drawing to its close; the weather was growing more and more winterly; high winds, piercingly cold, were raving158 through our narrow streets; and still the spirit of social festivity bade defiance159 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 ridicule160 thus incurred162; for the costliness163 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 affronted164 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 joyous166 spirits; proud to survey the splendid company he had gathered under his roof; happy to witness their happiness; elated in their elation167. 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 accomplished168 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 lustrous169 and bewitching than ever I had beheld170 her. There she had been placed by the host; and everybody knew why. That is one of the luxuries attached to love; all men cede64 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 rosy171 suffusion172 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 voluptuous173 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 reposing174 from their exertions175; when—O heavens! what a shriek176! what a gathering177 tumult!
Every eye was bent178 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 intercepted179 the view;—so much the more was the ear at leisure for the shrieks180 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 rustic181 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 exhausted182 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 soothe183 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 ballroom184 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 maiden185 sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, from forty to forty-six years of age, and an elderly female domestic.
An incident happened during the recital187 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 suspense188, he stooped and kissed her pallid189 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 outrage9. 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 affront165 offered to himself. Margaret, on reviving, was confounded at finding herself so situated190 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 recollected191 that it was a situation of excessive agitation193; but, if they alluded194 to the horrors of the moment, no situation more naturally opens the heart to affection and confiding love than the recoil151 from scenes of exquisite195 terror.
An examination went on that night before the magistrates196, 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 presumption199 for and against him. His mode of defending himself, and his general deportment, were marked by the coolest, nay, the most sneering200 indifference201. The first thing he did, on being acquainted with the suspicions against himself, was to laugh ferociously202, and to all appearance most cordially and unaffectedly. He demanded whether a poor man like himself would have left so much wealth as lay scattered204 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 magistrate197 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 awed108 the magistrates, that, upon their examination of the premises205, many rich articles of bijouterie, jewelry206, and personal ornaments207, 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 oratory209 that had been magnificently adorned210 by the elder of the maiden sisters. There was an altar, in itself a splendid object, furnished with every article of the most costly211 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 parquet212, 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 accurately213; 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 colossal214 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 ascertain215 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 gatherings216 of people in the street, arguing for the mysteriousness of the bloody217 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 interval218 other events had occurred no less terrific and mysterious. In this first murder, though the motive26 was dark and unintelligible219, yet the agency was not so; ordinary assassins apparently, and with ordinary means, had assailed220 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 destined221 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, leisurely222, 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 sequestered223 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 distress102 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 contemplate119 with fortitude224. 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 derived225 the means of repelling it. But, as things were, no man could guess what it was that must make him obnoxious226 to the murderers. Imagination exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes which could by possibility have made the poor Weishaupts objects of such hatred227 to any man. True, they were bigoted228 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 munificently229; and, being rich beyond their wants, or any means of employing wealth which their gloomy asceticism230 allowed, they had the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent231 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 incur161 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 sanctuary232 which no murderer's voice will ever violate. Quiet has not returned to us, but the first flutterings of panic have subsided233. 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 lodge234, 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 recollect192, 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 attentively235. 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 raven236 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 conjectured237 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 majestic239 beauty; somewhat haughty240, 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 frankly241 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 frenzied242 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 rotation243 to keep watch and ward99 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 droops244 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 judicious245 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 horrid246 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 cynical247 misers248, 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 hordes249 of ducats and English guineas in the very room where they died. Their bias250, again, though of an unpopular character, had rather availed to make them unknown than to make them hateful. In one point this case differed memorably251 from the other—that, instead of falling helpless, or flying victims (as the Weishaupts had done), these old men, strong, resolute252, and not so much taken by surprise, left proofs that they had made a desperate defense253. 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 standing113 in nearly the same relation. The girl who gave the alarm at the ball, with two little sisters, and a little orphan254 nephew, their cousin, divided the very large inheritance of the Weishaupts; and in this latter case the accumulated savings255 of two long lives all vested in the person of the amiable grandniece.
But now, as if in mockery of all our anxious consultations256 and elaborate devices, three fresh murders took place on the two consecutive257 nights succeeding these new arrangements. And in one case, as nearly as time could be noted258, 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 wayfaring259 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 inquiries260 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, conversed261 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 hesitation262, 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 misgiving263 that he had done wrong. A man entered in a horseman's cloak, and so muffled264 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 traitor265! 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 perplexed266, 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 drawn267 tight about his waist, so as to confine his arms, as well as to impede268 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 exulting269, 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 liberated270, 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 tightened271 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 vengeance272 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 poker273, 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 intrepid274 fidelity275 had been balked276, 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 invoked277 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 trickling279 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 reined280 up at Mr. Munzer's door. The crowd, gathering like the drifting of snow, supplied implements281 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 peculiarity282 more or less interesting. In that which happened on the following night, making the fifth in the series, an impressive incident varied283 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 testimony284 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 ascertained285 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 concealed286. 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 dilemma287 fear prompted an expedient288, 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, eddying289 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 hysterical290. 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 entirely291 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 asylum292, 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 ascending293 behind them. He had watched them through a crevice294, 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 clattering295 ascent296. 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 shrieking297 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 astonishment298 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 reign299 of terror, it may be supposed, had now reached its acme300. The two old ladies were both lying dead at different points on the staircase, and, as usual, no conjecture238 could be made as to the nature of the offense147 which they had given; but that the murder WAS a vindictive301 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 riveted302 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 allay303. The first arose out of the experience, now first obtained, that these assassins pursued the plan of secreting304 themselves within the house where they meditated305 a murder. All the care, therefore, previously directed to the securing of doors and windows after nightfall appeared nugatory306. The other feature brought to light on this occasion was vouched307 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 LUCRATIVE308 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 anarchy309 of evil passions. This condition of things lasted until the dawning of another spring.
It will be supposed that communications were made to the supreme310 government of the land as soon as the murders in our city were understood to be no casual occurrences, but links in a systematic311 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 strictly312 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 abruptly313 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 labors314, 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 sinecure315. 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 brutal316 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 magisterial317 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 gratitude318 as purifiers from a public nuisance. But was it certain that the jailer had died by the same hands as had so deeply afflicted319 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 thicket320 and dingle of this sylvan321 tract48. 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 recess322 of the forest, which summer veiled with its luxuriant umbrage323; and that Ferdinand, constantly wandering in the forest, had discovered the body; but we both acquitted324 him of having been an accomplice325 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 gnawed326 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 sneeringly327 of Maximilian. Maximilian despised him too heartily328 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 injustice329 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 anonymous330 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 insinuated331 about him. Could these letters be written by Ferdinand? Written they were not, but could they be dictated332 by him? Much I feared that they were; and the more so for one reason.
All at once, and most inexplicably333, 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 countenance334 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 thickets335, 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 remarkable336 one, bore upon a part of its trunk this brief but savage337 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 exponent339 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 innocence340 without anxiety. Once more we had peace within our walls, and tranquillity341 by our firesides. Again the child went to bed in cheerfulness, and the old man said his prayers in serenity342. 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 incapable343 of uttering a word; but his gestures, as he threw the door open and beckoned344 to the crowd, were quite enough. In the hall, at the further extremity345, 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 aged8 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 ominous346. 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 ascended347 the stair, and in the very first room, a small closet, or boudoir, lay Margaret, with her dress soiled hideously348 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 haze349 over a mirror, but it was suspended, and she was laboring350 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 deranged208 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 profusely351 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 thoroughly352 agitated, for the first time I had known him to be so. In the evening another perplexing piece of intelligence transpired353 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 prematurely355, 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 rumor356, followed a second, authenticated357, 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 celebrated359, though with great secrecy360, nearly eight months before. In our city, as in all the cities of our country, clandestine361 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 prudence362 or necessity to secure the hand of Margaret Liebenheim by a private marriage, against the final opposition363 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 fangs364 of the scandalmongers. These harpies had their prey365 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 ravages366 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 boding367 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 frantically368, and say things which terrified the bystanders, and which the physicians would solemnly caution them how they repeated; then she would weep, and invoke278 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 mighty370 distance.
After nearly seven weeks passed in this agitating371 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 ushered372 in the last great change of all. The conflict, which had for so long a period raged within her, and overthrown373 her reason, was at an end; the strife374 was over, and nature was settling into an everlasting375 rest. In the course of the night she had recovered her senses. When the morning light penetrated376 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 spoke377 to him—I called to him; but he heard me not—he saw me not. He saw nobody. Onward378 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 retired379 into one of the many sequestered chapels380 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, mustered381 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 hindrance382 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 eyelids383; 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 corpse384. She was in her coffin385; 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, torpid386, frozen. But the great burst of the choir387, 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 antidote388 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 determined389 to do is past all power of being affected203 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 discretion390. Here, again, is a paper still more important in my eyes; it is also testamentary, and binds391 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, whatsoever392 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 spasm393 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 marvel72 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 appropriation394 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 huddling395 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 'warfare396 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 authentic358 exposition, hear my last dying avowal397, that the murders which have desolated399 so many families within your walls, and made the household hearth16 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 prospects401, which you received from the Russian diplomatist, among some errors of little importance, is essentially402 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 immediate198 progenitors403 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 perils404 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 absolving405 themselves from engagements which pressed unpleasantly upon their finances. In this embarrassment he formed an intimacy406 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 rapacity407. 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 remitted408, through various channels, to England, where he became proprietor409 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 bribery410. 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 degradation411 to accept even of a sovereign prince on the terms of such marriage. This was no vain pretension93 of ostentatious vanity. It was one which had been admitted as valid412 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 dignified413 as a deep passion, but merely in pursuit of a vagrant414 fancy that would, on the next day, have given place to another equally fleeting415, 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 avenging416 his injuries. Still his eye told a tale which his superiors could brook417 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 breach418 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 humbled419 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 foes420. 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 northward421 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 premature354 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 sepulcher422 of honor and happiness to my poor family, my heart beats with frantic369 emotions. Never do I see that venerable dome186 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 monstrous423 indignities424 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 toll425. 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 temperately426, and, to do him justice, he did not seem desirous of insulting us; but he produced a printed board, on which, along with the vilest427 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 lodging428 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 upbraided429 the court- martial430 with their corrupt431 propensities432, and had even mentioned that overtures433 had been made to him for quashing the proceedings434 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 pretext435 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 conspired436 against him—witnesses were suborned; and, finally, under some antiquated437 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 conversing438 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 remains439 to the grave; and in every act connected with this last sad rite54 had met with insults and degradations440 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 quailed441; for by that time the French had made themselves odious442 to all who retained a spark of patriotic443 feeling. My heart sank within me when I looked up at the bench, this tribunal of tyrants444, 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 omnipotent445. 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 incensed446 magistracy. My mother was arrested, charged with some offense equal to petty treason, or scandalum magnatum, or the sowing of sedition447; 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 inflict448 upon woman personal scourging449 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 persecuted450 people, far heavier and more degrading punishments were annexed451 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 brute452 beasts? Sentence was passed, and the punishment was to be inflicted453 on two separate days, with an interval between each— doubtless to prolong the tortures of mind, but under a vile63 pretense454 of alleviating455 the physical torture. Three days after would come the first day of punishment. My mother spent the time in reading her native Scriptures456; she spent it in prayer and in musing457; 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 besieged458 morning, noon, and night. I wearied them with my supplications. I humbled myself to the dust; I, the haughtiest460 of God's creatures, knelt and prayed to them for the sake of my mother. I besought461 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 piety462 than to my mother's deserts. But rarely was I heard out with patience; and from some houses repelled463 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 trumpets464 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 momentary465 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 dagger466 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 triumphant467 cries. There, even then, even then, I made—O silent forest! thou heardst me when I made—a vow398 that I have kept too faithfully. Mother, thou art avenged468: sleep, daughter of Jerusalem! for at length the oppressor sleeps with thee. And thy poor son has paid, in discharge of his vow, the forfeit469 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 feverish470 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 serenely471 upon the vile mob, and awed even them by her serenity; she had disdained472 to utter a shriek when the cruel lash473 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 celestial474 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 uproar475; and feelings which they scarcely understood, mastered the rude rabble476 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 consecrated477 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 appalling478 to the eye, that desolation which has so long trampled479 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 'chamber480 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 sufficiently481 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 reassured482 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 bereft483 of friends, knew not which way to turn. In this abandonment they fell into the insidious484 hands of the ruffian jailer. My eldest485 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 custody486; 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 calamitous487 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 abhorred488 wretch338 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 slew489 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, exulted490; 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 subsisted491 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 relish492 this abuse of personal confidence in myself? No—I loathed493 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 scoffed494 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 condemned495 the mother, or of those who turned away with mockery from the supplication459 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 precisely496 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 malignity497 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 fixed498 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 embittered499 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 succor500. 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 transcended501 all else that I have suffered in these terrific scenes. She fainted in my arms, and I and another carried her upstairs and procured502 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, forestalled503 the explanation requisite504 in such a case to make my conduct intelligible. I had told her, under feigned505 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 miserably506 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, desolate400, and latterly delirious—were, by his own confession507, 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 cowardice508 the most abject509, 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 concussion510 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 glorified511 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 outrages512 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."
Introduction to Melmoth the Wanderer
Balzac likens the hero of one of his short stories to "Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Maturin's Melmoth—great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius in Europe."
"But what is 'Melmoth'? Why is HE classed as 'a great allegorical figure'?" exclaimed many a surprised reader. Few had perused—few know at this day—the terrible story of Melmoth the Wanderer, half man, half devil, who has bartered513 away his soul for the glory of power and knowledge, and, repenting514 of his bargain, tries again and again to persuade some desperate human to change places with him— penetrates515 to the refuge of misery, the death chamber, even the madhouse, seeking one in such utter agony as to accept his help, and take his curse—but ever fails.
Why this extraordinary tale, told with wild and compelling sweep, has remained so deep in oblivion, appears immediately on a glance at the original. The author, Charles Robert Maturin, a needy516, eccentric Irish clergyman of 1780-1824, could cause intense suspense and horror—could read keenly into human motives—could teach an awful moral lesson in the guise517 of fascinating fiction, but he could not stick to a long story with simplicity518. His dozens of shifting scenes, his fantastic coils of "tales within tales" sadly perplex the reader of "Melmoth" in the first version. It is hoped, however, that the present selection, by its directness and the clearness of the story thread, may please the modern reader better than the involved original, and bring before a wider public some of the most gripping descriptions ever penned in English.
In Volume IV of these stories comes a tale, "Melmoth Reconciled," which Balzac himself wrote, while under the spell of Maturin's "great allegorical figure." Here the unhappy being succeeds in his purpose. The story takes place in mocking, careless Paris, "that branch establishment of hell"; a cashier, on the eve of embezzlement519 and detection, cynically520 accedes521 to Melmoth's terms, and accepts his help—with what unlooked-for results, the reader may see.
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1
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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repelling
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| v.击退( repel的现在分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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hearths
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| 壁炉前的地板，炉床，壁炉边( hearth的名词复数 ) | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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extermination
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| n.消灭，根绝 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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exterminating
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的现在分词 ) | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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beleaguered
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| adj.受到围困[围攻]的；包围的v.围攻( beleaguer的过去式和过去分词)；困扰；骚扰 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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51
moorish
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| adj.沼地的，荒野的，生[住]在沼地的 | |
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52
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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53
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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54
rite
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| n.典礼，惯例，习俗 | |
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55
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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56
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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57
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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58
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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59
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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60
accomplishments
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| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
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61
maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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62
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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63
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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64
cede
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| v.割让，放弃 | |
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65
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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66
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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67
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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68
syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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69
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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71
stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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72
marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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73
depicting
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| 描绘，描画( depict的现在分词 )； 描述 | |
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74
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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75
conditionally
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| adv. 有条件地 | |
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76
justify
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|
| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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77
unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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78
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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79
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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80
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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81
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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82
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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83
transcending
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的现在分词 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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84
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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85
quelling
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| v.（用武力）制止，结束，镇压( quell的现在分词 ) | |
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86
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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87
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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88
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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89
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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90
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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91
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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92
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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93
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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94
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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95
confiding
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|
| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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96
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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97
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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98
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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99
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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100
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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101
syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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102
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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103
distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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104
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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105
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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106
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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107
thawed
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| 解冻 | |
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108
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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109
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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110
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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111
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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112
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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113
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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114
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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115
tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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116
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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117
realization
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|
| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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118
contemplated
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|
| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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119
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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120
chimera
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| n.神话怪物；梦幻 | |
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121
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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122
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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123
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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124
auspices
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| n.资助，赞助 | |
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125
annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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126
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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127
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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128
ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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129
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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130
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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131
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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132
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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133
maniacal
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| adj.发疯的 | |
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134
invoking
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| v.援引( invoke的现在分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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135
beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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136
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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137
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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138
callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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139
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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140
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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141
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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142
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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143
overture
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| n.前奏曲、序曲，提议，提案，初步交涉 | |
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144
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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145
penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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146
offenses
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| n.进攻( offense的名词复数 )；（球队的）前锋；进攻方法；攻势 | |
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147
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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148
snares
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| n.陷阱( snare的名词复数 )；圈套；诱人遭受失败（丢脸、损失等）的东西；诱惑物v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的第三人称单数 ) | |
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149
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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150
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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151
recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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152
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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153
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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154
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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155
penetrating
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|
| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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156
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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157
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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158
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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159
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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160
ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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161
incur
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| vt.招致，蒙受，遭遇 | |
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162
incurred
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| [医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式 | |
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163
costliness
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| 昂贵的 | |
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164
affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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165
affront
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| n./v.侮辱，触怒 | |
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166
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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167
elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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168
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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169
lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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170
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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171
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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172
suffusion
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| n.充满 | |
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173
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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174
reposing
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的现在分词 ) | |
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175
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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176
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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177
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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178
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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179
intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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180
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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181
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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182
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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183
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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184
ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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185
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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186
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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187
recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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188
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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189
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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190
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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191
recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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192
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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193
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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194
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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195
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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196
magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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197
magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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198
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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199
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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200
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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201
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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202
ferociously
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| 野蛮地，残忍地 | |
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203
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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204
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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205
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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206
jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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207
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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208
deranged
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| adj.疯狂的 | |
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209
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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210
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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211
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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212
parquet
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| n.镶木地板 | |
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213
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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214
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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215
ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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216
gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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217
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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218
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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219
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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220
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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221
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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222
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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223
sequestered
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| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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224
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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225
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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226
obnoxious
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|
| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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227
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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228
bigoted
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| adj.固执己见的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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229
munificently
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230
asceticism
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| n.禁欲主义 | |
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231
indigent
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的 | |
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232
sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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233
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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234
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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235
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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236
raven
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|
| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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237
conjectured
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| 推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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238
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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239
majestic
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|
| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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240
haughty
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|
| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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241
frankly
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|
| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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242
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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243
rotation
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| n.旋转；循环，轮流 | |
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244
droops
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的名词复数 ) | |
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245
judicious
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|
| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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246
horrid
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|
| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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247
cynical
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|
| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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248
misers
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| 守财奴，吝啬鬼( miser的名词复数 ) | |
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249
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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250
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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251
memorably
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| 难忘的 | |
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252
resolute
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|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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253
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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254
orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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255
savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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256
consultations
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| n.磋商（会议）( consultation的名词复数 )；商讨会；协商会；查找 | |
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257
consecutive
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|
| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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258
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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259
wayfaring
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| adj.旅行的n.徒步旅行 | |
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260
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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261
conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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262
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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263
misgiving
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕 | |
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264
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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265
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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266
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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267
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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268
impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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269
exulting
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| vi. 欢欣鼓舞，狂喜 | |
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270
liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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271
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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272
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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273
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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274
intrepid
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| adj.无畏的，刚毅的 | |
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275
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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276
balked
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| v.畏缩不前，犹豫( balk的过去式和过去分词 )；（指马）不肯跑 | |
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277
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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278
invoke
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| v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求 | |
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279
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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280
reined
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| 勒缰绳使（马）停步( rein的过去式和过去分词 )； 驾驭； 严格控制； 加强管理 | |
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281
implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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282
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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283
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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284
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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285
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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286
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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287
dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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288
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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289
eddying
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| 涡流，涡流的形成 | |
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290
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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291
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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292
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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293
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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294
crevice
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| n.(岩石、墙等)裂缝；缺口 | |
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295
clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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296
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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297
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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298
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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299
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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300
acme
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| n.顶点，极点 | |
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301
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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302
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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303
allay
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| v.消除，减轻(恐惧、怀疑等) | |
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304
secreting
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| v.（尤指动物或植物器官）分泌( secrete的现在分词 )；隐匿，隐藏 | |
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305
meditated
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|
| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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306
nugatory
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|
| adj.琐碎的，无价值的 | |
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307
vouched
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|
| v.保证( vouch的过去式和过去分词 )；担保；确定；确定地说 | |
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308
lucrative
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|
| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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309
anarchy
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|
| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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310
supreme
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|
| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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311
systematic
|
|
| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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312
strictly
|
|
| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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313
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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314
labors
|
|
| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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315
sinecure
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|
| n.闲差事，挂名职务 | |
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316
brutal
|
|
| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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317
magisterial
|
|
| adj.威风的，有权威的；adv.威严地 | |
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318
gratitude
|
|
| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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319
afflicted
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|
| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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320
thicket
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|
| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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321
sylvan
|
|
| adj.森林的 | |
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322
recess
|
|
| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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323
umbrage
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|
| n.不快；树荫 | |
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324
acquitted
|
|
| 宣判…无罪( acquit的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（自己）作出某种表现 | |
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325
accomplice
|
|
| n.从犯，帮凶，同谋 | |
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326
gnawed
|
|
| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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327
sneeringly
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|
| 嘲笑地，轻蔑地 | |
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328
heartily
|
|
| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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329
injustice
|
|
| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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330
anonymous
|
|
| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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331
insinuated
|
|
| v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
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332
dictated
|
|
| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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333
inexplicably
|
|
| adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是 | |
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334
countenance
|
|
| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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335
thickets
|
|
| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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336
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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337
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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338
wretch
|
|
| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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339
exponent
|
|
| n.倡导者，拥护者；代表人物；指数，幂 | |
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340
innocence
|
|
| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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341
tranquillity
|
|
| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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342
serenity
|
|
| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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343
incapable
|
|
| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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344
beckoned
|
|
| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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345
extremity
|
|
| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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346
ominous
|
|
| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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347
ascended
|
|
| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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348
hideously
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|
| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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349
haze
|
|
| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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350
laboring
|
|
| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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351
profusely
|
|
| ad.abundantly | |
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352
thoroughly
|
|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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353
transpired
|
|
| （事实，秘密等）被人知道( transpire的过去式和过去分词 )； 泄露； 显露； 发生 | |
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354
premature
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|
| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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355
prematurely
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|
| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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356
rumor
|
|
| n.谣言，谣传，传说 | |
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357
authenticated
|
|
| v.证明是真实的、可靠的或有效的( authenticate的过去式和过去分词 )；鉴定，使生效 | |
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358
authentic
|
|
| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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359
celebrated
|
|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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360
secrecy
|
|
| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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361
clandestine
|
|
| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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362
prudence
|
|
| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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363
opposition
|
|
| n.反对，敌对 | |
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364
fangs
|
|
| n.（尤指狗和狼的）长而尖的牙( fang的名词复数 )；（蛇的）毒牙；罐座 | |
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365
prey
|
|
| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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366
ravages
|
|
| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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367
boding
|
|
| adj.凶兆的，先兆的n.凶兆，前兆，预感v.预示，预告，预言( bode的现在分词 )；等待，停留( bide的过去分词 )；居住；（过去式用bided）等待 | |
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368
frantically
|
|
| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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369
frantic
|
|
| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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370
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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371
agitating
|
|
| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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372
ushered
|
|
| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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373
overthrown
|
|
| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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374
strife
|
|
| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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375
everlasting
|
|
| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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376
penetrated
|
|
| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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377
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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378
onward
|
|
| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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|
379
retired
|
|
| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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380
chapels
|
|
| n.小教堂， （医院、监狱等的）附属礼拜堂( chapel的名词复数 )；（在小教堂和附属礼拜堂举行的）礼拜仪式 | |
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381
mustered
|
|
| v.集合，召集，集结（尤指部队）( muster的过去式和过去分词 )；（自他人处）搜集某事物；聚集；激发 | |
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382
hindrance
|
|
| n.妨碍，障碍 | |
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383
eyelids
|
|
| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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|
384
corpse
|
|
| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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385
coffin
|
|
| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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386
torpid
|
|
| adj.麻痹的，麻木的，迟钝的 | |
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387
choir
|
|
| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
参考例句： |
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388
antidote
|
|
| n.解毒药，解毒剂 | |
参考例句： |
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389
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
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390
discretion
|
|
| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
参考例句： |
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391
binds
|
|
| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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392
whatsoever
|
|
| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
参考例句： |
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393
spasm
|
|
| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
参考例句： |
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394
appropriation
|
|
| n.拨款，批准支出 | |
参考例句： |
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395
huddling
|
|
| n. 杂乱一团, 混乱, 拥挤 v. 推挤, 乱堆, 草率了事 | |
参考例句： |
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396
warfare
|
|
| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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397
avowal
|
|
| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
参考例句： |
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398
vow
|
|
| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
参考例句： |
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399
desolated
|
|
| adj.荒凉的，荒废的 | |
参考例句： |
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400
desolate
|
|
| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
参考例句： |
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|
401
prospects
|
|
| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
参考例句： |
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402
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
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403
progenitors
|
|
| n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本 | |
参考例句： |
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404
perils
|
|
| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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405
absolving
|
|
| 宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的现在分词 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责） | |
参考例句： |
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406
intimacy
|
|
| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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407
rapacity
|
|
| n.贪婪，贪心，劫掠的欲望 | |
参考例句： |
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408
remitted
|
|
| v.免除（债务），宽恕( remit的过去式和过去分词 )；使某事缓和；寄回，传送 | |
参考例句： |
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409
proprietor
|
|
| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
参考例句： |
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410
bribery
|
|
| n.贿络行为，行贿，受贿 | |
参考例句： |
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411
degradation
|
|
| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
参考例句： |
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412
valid
|
|
| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
参考例句： |
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413
dignified
|
|
| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
参考例句： |
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414
vagrant
|
|
| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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415
fleeting
|
|
| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
参考例句： |
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416
avenging
|
|
| adj.报仇的，复仇的v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 )；为…报复 | |
参考例句： |
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417
brook
|
|
| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
参考例句： |
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418
breach
|
|
| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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419
humbled
|
|
| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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420
foes
|
|
| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
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421
northward
|
|
| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
参考例句： |
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422
sepulcher
|
|
| n.坟墓 | |
参考例句： |
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423
monstrous
|
|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
参考例句： |
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424
indignities
|
|
| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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425
toll
|
|
| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
参考例句： |
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426
temperately
|
|
| adv.节制地，适度地 | |
参考例句： |
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427
vilest
|
|
| adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
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428
lodging
|
|
| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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429
upbraided
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| v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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430
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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431
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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432
propensities
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| n.倾向，习性( propensity的名词复数 ) | |
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433
overtures
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| n.主动的表示，提议；（向某人做出的）友好表示、姿态或提议( overture的名词复数 )；（歌剧、芭蕾舞、音乐剧等的）序曲，前奏曲 | |
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434
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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435
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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436
conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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437
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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438
conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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439
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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440
degradations
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| 堕落( degradation的名词复数 )； 下降； 陵削； 毁坏 | |
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441
quailed
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| 害怕，发抖，畏缩( quail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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442
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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443
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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444
tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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445
omnipotent
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| adj.全能的，万能的 | |
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446
incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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447
sedition
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| n.煽动叛乱 | |
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448
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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449
scourging
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| 鞭打( scourge的现在分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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450
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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451
annexed
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| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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452
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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453
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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454
pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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455
alleviating
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| 减轻，缓解，缓和( alleviate的现在分词 ) | |
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456
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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457
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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458
besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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459
supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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460
haughtiest
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| haughty（傲慢的，骄傲的）的最高级形式 | |
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461
besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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462
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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463
repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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464
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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465
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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466
dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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467
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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468
avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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469
forfeit
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| vt.丧失；n.罚金，罚款，没收物 | |
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470
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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471
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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472
disdained
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| 鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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473
lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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474
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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475
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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476
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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477
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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478
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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479
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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480
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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481
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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482
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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483
bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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484
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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485
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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486
custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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487
calamitous
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| adj.灾难的，悲惨的；多灾多难；惨重 | |
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488
abhorred
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| v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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489
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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490
exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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491
subsisted
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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492
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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493
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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494
scoffed
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| 嘲笑，嘲弄( scoff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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495
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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496
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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497
malignity
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| n.极度的恶意，恶毒；（病的）恶性 | |
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498
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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499
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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500
succor
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| n.援助，帮助；v.给予帮助 | |
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501
transcended
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的过去式和过去分词 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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502
procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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503
forestalled
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| v.先发制人，预先阻止( forestall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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504
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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505
feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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506
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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507
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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508
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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509
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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510
concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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511
glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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512
outrages
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| 引起…的义愤，激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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513
bartered
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| v.作物物交换，以货换货( barter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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514
repenting
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的现在分词 ) | |
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515
penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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516
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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517
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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518
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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519
embezzlement
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| n.盗用，贪污 | |
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520
cynically
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| adv.爱嘲笑地，冷笑地 | |
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521
accedes
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| v.（正式）加入( accede的第三人称单数 )；答应；（通过财产的添附而）增加；开始任职 | |
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