Valperga (51 page)

The witch went to Ferrara. She traversed the hills, and went by
unknown paths, and across the untrodden mountains, guided either by
her former experience, or by the arch fiend himself; for it
required almost supernatural knowledge to trace her way among the
heaped and confused range of the Apennines. She walked at night,
and rested during the day, and saw the sun many times rise and set
among the wild forests that covered the hills. At Ferrara she
learnt what she desired: Beatrice, the Ancilla Dei, the prophetess,
was not forgotten; even her connection with Castruccio had been
guessed at; and some even dared assert, that she had never quitted
Lucca, or the palace of the prince, during her pretended pilgrimage
to Rome. The witch returned, joyful to think that she had now
obtained an instrument for some of her projects.

What were her projects? They had not that settled aim and
undeviating course which one object might inspire. Her desire was
malice; and her present hope, to impress upon Bindo some notion of
the powers to which she pretended. She had been young once; and her
nature, never mild, had been turned to ferocity by wrongs which had
been received so long ago, that the authors of them were all dead,
and she, the victim, alone survived. Calumny had blasted her name;
her dearest affections had been blighted; her children torn from
her; and she remained to execrate and to avenge.

Her evil propensities had long exhausted themselves in acts of
petty mischief among the peasantry; but her connection with Bindo
gave her hopes of a wider scope for wickedness. To injure
Castruccio, or to benefit Euthanasia, was alike indifferent to her.
She saw and understood more of the human heart than Bindo did: she
knew, that Euthanasia had once loved the prince; and injury to him
she hoped would carry a double sting. She was old, perhaps about to
die; and she thought that there would be a pleasure in expiring
amidst the groans of the victims of her malice.

In these days, when the passions, if they are not milder, are
more restrained, and assume a more conventional appearance, it will
be doubted if such fiendish love of mischief ever existed; but that
it did, all tradition and history prove. It was believed, that the
witch loved evil as her daily bread, and that she had sold her soul
to the devil to do ill alone; she knew how powerless she was; but
she desired to fill in every part the character attributed to
her.

As she returned over the Apennines, she planned her future
conduct; she thought she saw one mighty ruin envelop three
master-spirits of the human kind, plotted by her alone. It was a
dangerous experiment. "But I must die," she cried;
"and what death will be sweeter, even if it be in the midst of
flames, if so many share the torments with me? And thou, puny
abortion, who darest with trembling hands meddle in work beyond
thee, thou also shalt taste the poison so long withheld! A canker
cling to you all! I have long sought for labour suited to my
genius; and now I have found it."

It was on the day previous to the departure of Euthanasia for
Florence, that the witch returned: she met Bindo with a ghastly
smile. "All," she cried, "is as you wish; the star
of Castruccio will be extinguished behind the murky cloud which
this same Beatrice will raise. Bring her to me; in time you shall
know all: but be wary; the countess must be blind and deaf to our
machinations."

Euthanasia had departed, leaving Beatrice far calmer than she
had before been since her release from prison. But no feelings were
more fluctuating than those of the poor prophetess. The day after
she had parted from her protectress, Padre Lanfranco had been
called upon urgent business to Sienna; and she was left without a
guide to the workings of her own mind. She could not stand this;
the consolations of Euthanasia, and the exhortations of the priest
were alike forgotten; and Beatrice, turned out, as it were, without
shelter, fell into repinings and despair.

She had ardently desired to see Castruccio; but her confessor
had commanded her to avoid all occasions of meeting him, if she
wished to fit herself for the holy life to which she said she felt
herself called. Beatrice was easily led; but she had no command
over herself; and, the moment she was left to her own guidance, she
was hurried away by the slightest impression.

Castruccio had just returned from Pistoia on the news of the
insurrection of Pisa; and it was said that he would again quit
Lucca on the following morning. "Now or never," thought
Beatrice, "I may have my will unreproved; if this day escape,
I am again surrounded, enchained; I might see him, hear his voice;
oh! that I had courage to make the attempt! Yet I fear that this
may be the suggestion of some evil spirit; I must not, dare not see
him."

She wept and prayed; but in vain. In her days of ecstatic
reverie she had sanctified and obeyed every impulse as of divine
origin; and now she could not withstand the impressions she felt.
She wrapped a coarse capuchin around her, and sallied forth, with
trembling steps, and eyes gleaming with tears, to go and gaze on
the form of him for whom she had sacrificed her all. Hardly had she
proceeded two paces from Euthanasia's palace-gate, before a
form--a man--passed before her, and with a loud shriek she fell
senseless on the pavement. She was brought back to the house, and
carefully nursed; but several days elapsed, while, still possessed
with fever, she raved of the most tremendous and appalling scenes
and actions, which she fancied were taking place around her. The
man whom she had seen was Tripalda; and from what she said in her
delirium, it might be gathered, that he had been an actor in the
frightful wrongs she had endured during her strange imprisonment in
the Campagna di Roma. She was attended on with kindness, and she
recovered; and such was the effect of her delirium, that she
persuaded herself that what had so terrified her, was a mere vision
conjured up by her imagination. She thought that the vivid image of
this partner of her enemy's crimes, thus coming across her
while she was on the point of disobeying her confessor's
injunction, was a warning and punishment from heaven.

Euthanasia was away, and Beatrice dared not speak to any: she
brooded in her own mind over the appearance, mysterious as she
thought it, of this man; until her fancy was so high wrought, that
she feared her very shadow on the wall; and the echo of her own
steps as she trod the marble pavement of her chamber, made her
tremble with terror; the scenes she had witnessed, the horrors that
she had endured in that unhallowed asylum of crime, presented
themselves to her in their most vivid colours; she remembered all,
saw all; and the deep anguish she felt was no longer mitigated by
converse with her friend.

"Oh, cruel, unkind Euthanasia!" she cried, "why
did you leave me? My only hope, my only trust was in you; and you
desert me. Alas! alas! I am a broken reed, and none will support
me; the winds blow, and I am prostrated to the ground; and, if I
rise again, I am bruised, almost annihilated.

"Oh! that I could die! and yet I fear death. Oh! thou, who
wert my teacher and saviour, thou who expiredst smiling amidst
flames, would that thou wert here to teach me to die! What do I in
this fair garden of the world? I am a weed, a noxious insect; would
that some superior power would root me out utterly, or some
giant-foot tread me to dust! Yet I ask for what I do not wish. Was
he a good God that moulded all the agonizing contradictions of this
frail heart?

"Yet hush, presumptuous spirit! recall no more those
lessons, which I hoped had been forgotten. Father! God! behold the
most miserable and weakest of thy creatures; teach me to die; and
then kill me!"

She sat in the neglected garden of the palace, on one of the
pedestals which had been placed as a stand for the pots containing
lemon-trees; she leaned her head upon her hand, while the tears
trickled down unheeded. It had been her delight, ever since her
arrival at Lucca, to rove in this wild garden; and sometimes, when
the sun had been long set, and the sound of the Ave Maria had died
away, she would sit there, and, fixing her eyes on the brightest
star of the heavens, would sing the remembered melodies of her
childhood. Nothing recalls past feeling so strongly as the notes of
once-loved music; the memory was almost too much for her; and her
eyes streamed tears, as she sang the sweetest lay that mortal ear
had ever heard. Euthanasia had listened, she loved to listen, to
her wild airs; and, as Beatrice saw her own deep emotions reflected
in the beaming eyes of her friend, she felt soothed. But she was
now alone; she felt the solitude; she felt, that she sang, and that
none heeded her song: but, as the violet breathes as sweet an odour
on the indifferent air, as when the loveliest creature in the world
bends over it to inhale its fragrance; so did Beatrice now sing in
solitude, while, her heart warmed, her imagination expanded, and
she felt a transport which was pleasure, although a sea of black
despair was its near boundary.

As she sang, Bindo came near her unperceived. He had never
addressed her before; and she had never observed him: she was one
of those persons, who feel their own life and identity so much,
that they seem to have no spare feeling and sense for the
uninteresting events and persons that pass around them. He now
spoke in a loud voice, arousing her from her deep reverie:

"Awake, prophetess; it is not well that you should sleep;
the spirits of the air have work for you; all Tuscany feels your
superhuman presence."

Beatrice started, and gazed with surprise on the being who thus
addressed her: his dwarfish stature, his white hair and eyelashes,
his pale and wrinkled face, and his light reddish eyes gave him a
strange appearance; he looked indeed like one of the spirits whose
existence he asserted; and she shuddered as she beheld him.

"I come," continued Bindo, "from one, whose eye
can see the forms that pass, to me viewless, through the air; from
one, who has thunder and tempest like dogs in a leash, and who can
wind and unwind the will of man, as the simple girl spins thread
from her distaff. I bear a message to you."

"Of whom do you speak? I do not understand you."

"You will understand her words; for between the gifted
there are signs, which none else know, but which bind them fast
together."

"Are you one of those?" asked the wondering girl.

"I am not," replied Bindo; "you know that I am
not, though I did not tell you. Are you not Beatrice, the
prophetess of Ferrara? But my words are weak. There is one who
lives in a cavern not far off, who was called, when young, Fior di
Ligi, and now she calls herself Fior di Mandragola; she rules the
spirits who live about us, and is powerful over the seasons, and
over the misfortunes and sorrows of life. She bade me tell you to
awake; this night I will lead you to her; and she will by her
incantations take off the veil which spirits of darkness have
thrown over you."

"You talk of nothing; who are you?"

"I am a servant of the countess of Valperga; nothing more;
a poor, ignorant, despised dwarf, a blight, a stunt: but I am more
powerful in my weakness, than they with their giant limbs and
strong muscles;--at least I have that strength, as long as I am
obedient to her of whom I spoke. These are the words she bade me
say to you,--'There is a cloud over you which words of power
can dispel; you are that which you seemed, and not that which you
believe;--come to the cavern of Fior di Mandragola; and she will
restore you to that height, from which the ignorance of others, and
your own want of faith have precipitated you."

"And who is Fior di Mandragola?"

"A witch,--a woman with grey hair and decrepit limbs; she
is clothed in rags, and feeds upon acorns and wood-nuts; but she is
greater than any queen. If she were to command, this blue sky would
be covered with clouds, the Serchio would overflow, and the plain
of Lucca heave with earthquake; she makes men fear they know not
what; for by her command spirits tug them by the hair, and they
shiver with dread. One only she cannot command; one will, one
fortune, one power cannot be controlled by her; but your star
surmounts his.--So, come, that you may know how to rule
him."

"Whom?"

"The prince of Lucca."

"Away! you know not what you say."

"I obey; speak not of this to the countess; I will be at
your chamber- window by midnight."

Bindo retreated, leaving Beatrice startled and trembling. She
did not rely on his wild creed; but she felt as if it might be
true. She had once believed in the command of man over supernatural
agency; and she had thrown aside that creed, when she lost her
faith in her own powers. She ran rapidly in her thoughts over all
that had occurred to her of this nature, her ecstasies, her
delirious and joyous aspirations,--they were more dead and cold,
than the white ashes of a long-extinguished fire;--but other events
had occurred, and she had felt inexplicable emotions which seemed
to link her to other existences. She remembered her dream; and,
covering her eyes with her hands, she endeavoured to recall what
words and forms had been revealed to her on that occasion--vainly;
the attempt served only more to shake reason already tottering. It
awoke her however from her unbelief; and she again felt those deep
and inquisitive thoughts, that had for many years been the life of
her being. She resolved to visit Fior di Mandragola; she knew not
why, but curiosity was mingled with the desire of change and
freedom; she thought that it would be delightful to visit at
midnight the witch's cave, guided by the strange Albinois.
Beatrice was left alone to her own reflections for the whole
evening; they were ever dreadful, except when the vivacity of her
imagination mingled rainbows with the tempest.