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Peter the Priest, a fiction by Maurus Jokai |
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Chapter 7. Venus And Her Son |
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_ CHAPTER VII. VENUS AND HER SON Idalia was the baptismal name of the Lady of Madocsany; her other name was Venus. This name is often found in calendars even at the present day, and was quite customary in this part of the country. With this name at her baptism, a fatal ban was pronounced upon her. The Lady did not know that she had inherited not only the beauty of the goddess, but also her nature too. When she loved, she loved with mad passion, and when she ceased to love, she hated in the same way, and her hate was deadly. "Venus armicida." Her passion never cooled. It only changed its flame, but always burned in one way or another. She had married early the man of her choice, a handsome hero when he married her, a broken-down old man when he left her a widow, though the number of years between was only eight. It was said he had drunk himself to death. Perhaps there was a magic drink mingled with his wine. Idalia had so thrown herself into the Olympic life her name justified that she had her little son baptized Cupid. The poor Slavic priest was made to believe that this was only the childish name for Cupa, who was known to be a national saint and martyr. In one house lived Venus and Cupid. The lady cherished her son with truly animal love; everything was allowed him. She never let him out of her sight even in her love adventures. The child could remember several such instances when they had galloped off three in the saddle,--the knight, the child, and the mother. Lady Idalia had run away from her husband, but every time had cajoled her way back. Tihamer Csorbai was the last object of her passion, and because this remained unanswered, she had been most furious. She destroyed every hindrance between the two. Blood must flow to separate Tihamer from his first beloved. Idalia's husband must sink into his grave that Tihamer might be more closely united to her, and now the whole plan had been made futile; she had found Tihamer again, but as Father Peter. The man she had adored was now a permanent guest within her house, but farther from her than ever before. Not earthly hands, but heavenly fields, separated them; and how many projects of insurrection did her heated brain plan against hated Heaven. In the warm, starlit nights of summer, from the room of the monk below, rang forth the mournful psalms with which he stormed Heaven. At the same time, the lady sat in her balcony and struck her harp and sang enticing songs, telling all the secrets of a passion-torn soul. The song was intended for a confession of love. Did Father Peter hear? He must have heard them. Is every feeling in his heart turned to stone that he cannot feel nor awake?
"Why do you say that, my child?" "Before you came, my mother was very fond of me; she always called me, 'my diamond,' 'my ruby,' 'my saint,' 'my little dove,' or 'my little angel.' When she took me in her lap, she kissed me to the very finger tips; whatever I asked her for, she gave me at once, or if she did not, I pulled her hair, and then she would laugh and kiss me again. She never looked cross at me, but now that you are here, I am of no further value to her. I am no more her 'diamond' or 'golden treasure;' when she looks at me, she makes such a face that I have to run away. If I ask my prettiest for something, she puts out her tongue at me. If I make the smallest mistake, she whips me with rods and threatens me with the lash. If I try to kiss her, she spits like a cat. This makes me think that the devils brought you here." The monk answered nothing, but stroked the boy's head with his hands, and the child prattled on. "But when I stop to think how good you are to me, that you won't let my mother abuse me, that you make excuses for me when she scolds me, that you take the lash right out of her hand; when I make a mistake, you don't tell her anything about it; when she gets angry with me, you soothe her with gentle words; that you never hurt me, never get angry at me, always entreat me kindly, and warn me gently; then I think it must be the good spirits brought you to this house." The monk took the boy's cold hands in his and warmed them. "Now, day before yesterday, I begged her so prettily to take me up in her lap, because my head hurt me very badly, and if she would just kiss it once the pain would go right away, she scolded me for it. She said my head pained me because I ate so many unripe peaches and honeycakes, and she took away the honeycake that you brought me,--would not let me taste it even, but threw it to the little dog Joli,--how could I help crying? That made her very angry, and she made a face at me like those she makes at her maid when she pulls her hair, or at the haiduk when he pours the sauce over her gown; and when I knelt before her, begging her not to be angry, she took a large buckle out of her cap and threatened me with it, and then she hissed at me through her teeth, 'You bastard! Oh, if you were not in the world!' I was afraid she would murder me. I begged her to put that cruel thing back into her hair. 'You'd better pray God, or you'll go the way of the Cseiteburg children. Go, get the Fool to tell you why the dead weep nights in the Cseiteburg.' So to-night, when I went to bed, while you were singing psalms in the next room, I begged the Fool to tell me the story of the Cseiteburg children, until he finally consented, and told me." The child still trembled under the impression of the story, and his teeth chattered. "Now come close to me, so that nobody can hear. I don't dare say it out loud. Now then! Once upon a time, there lived in the Cseiteburg a beautiful lady, a widow who had two little children just my age, twins that came into the world together, and always played together. The beautiful lady fell in love with a handsome knight who came often to the castle, and whom she wished to marry. Once the knight said to her, he would like to marry her if there were not 'four eyes in the way.' The beautiful woman thought he must mean the four eyes of her two children, and that he would not marry her because there were these two children of her first marriage. So she called Mistress Dorko, the old nurse of the children, and said to her 'Take these two pins,' and with that she drew two long gold pins out of her cap, 'and go lead the children out to play in the forest; when they have played enough, and grow weary, put them to sleep in your lap and thrust these long pins through their temples. The handsome knight shall not say that there are "four eyes in the way" of our love.' The bad old Dorko did as her lady commanded. She took the two little boys out into the wood to play, waited until they had grown tired, then took them in her lap and told them about the fairy Helen until they fell asleep: then she drew out both the big pins and stuck one of them through the head of one of the boys. The other boy woke at his cry, and when he saw what old Dorko had done to his brother, he began to cry and beg her not to stick the pin through him. He promised her a cloak with buckles, horses, carriage, and a piece of land, if she would spare him. He promised her the whole of Cseiteburg, as soon as he inherited it. But the wicked nurse could not be moved by his tears and prayers, she pierced the second one through with the big gold pin, and then she left them in the depths of the forest, covered with dry leaves; the cuckoos sounded their funeral knell, and the nightingale sang their death dirge. The same day came the handsome knight to the beautiful lady in the castle. And the beautiful lady said to him, full of joy, '"The four eyes" are no longer in our way, the two children lie out there covered with leaves, the cuckoo has tolled them to the grave, the nightingales have sung for them. Now you can make me your wife.' The handsome knight was beside himself at these words. 'Alas, beautiful lady, beautiful widow! I did not mean "the four eyes" of the children, but our own four eyes were in the way of our love.' And thereupon he fled out of the castle, and never came back again. Since then, the ghosts weep all night long at Cseiteburg. This is true, isn't it, Father Peter?" "A foolish story, sprung from a Fool's brain. Don't believe it, my little one." "But I do believe it, for I've seen the beautiful lady myself. Her eyes rolled so wildly, she drew her lips together, she gnashed her teeth, and her hair streamed down her back, and as her cap fell back, she seized the pin in her hand--and I almost felt its point in my temples!" "Don't think of it any more. Don't give way to your fancies." The child seized the monk's hand in both of his: "You won't leave me, will you? You won't let anything happen?" "Don't be afraid, my son; I will stay with you always, no one shall do you any harm. I will take care of you, and protect you." "But why do you not love her, then? My two eyes are not in your way. How often have we fled from this house together on horseback, my mother and I with a knight; she never would let me go from her side. And then when we came back in a carriage, she fairly wore me out with her kisses, called me her sweet child, and when we came back to my father, she would hold me out, and I must beg him in his anger not to draw his sword against her. I caressed his cheeks, that he might be cajoled into forgiving. I never failed her, and why is she angry with me? Why? Because you do not love her. Do love her. Throw off your monk's cowl. Marry my mother. Be my real father. Do as she demands. Love her! Love her! Then will she be as sweet as honey, and as beautiful as a fairy. But when she does not love, she is as bitter as gall and as hateful as a witch." Father Peter quieted the child in his wild imaginations, until he fell asleep again. The sound of a harp and passionate songs of love floated through the night air. Father Peter left the child's room with agitated feelings, and hurried along the corridors to the balcony where Idalia confided her heart's sorrow to the forest and the stars. The sound of his step aroused the lady from her dreams. She looked at him in surprise as he approached. Father Peter took her by the hand, and drew her into the room. Idalia's heart began to beat violently. She thought that the hand which he now laid on her shoulder would draw her to his breast, until now ice, now melted by the volcanic glow of her love. "Kneel down," said the priest, "Confess your sin at once." "What sin? You know all," murmured the woman, while she sank down under the iron pressure of his hand. "Your past that as yet has no name--what you carry about in your heart--that monster must be stifled while it still exists only as a thought. What is this thought of yours?" The woman was silent for a time, meditating contradiction and crafty evasion, but at length she yielded and said in a whisper, "I intended to kill my child." "Cursed be the heart in which such a thought could arise." "If my heart is the mother of this monster, yours is the father; such devils result when fire and frost come together." "Are you mindful of God and the future life?" "Don't speak to me of God or of the future life! When I go there, and see God face to face, I shall say: I am the one--I did it! Hadst Thou given me cold blood, I might have been a frog, but thou gavest me warm blood, and I became a human being. Hadst Thou created me man, I might have been a Cain; Thou hast made me a woman, and I have become an Eve. In this way didst Thou fashion my woman's heart; it was Thou that didst create my passions, that didst make my eye a magnet, that didst give my lips their charm; it is Thou that dost send thoughts to the wakeful, and dreams to the sleeping; and now wilt Thou condemn Thy own creation unheard? If Thou art my Creator, Thou didst create me thus; if Thou art all-knowing, Thou knewest this before." "Woman, blaspheme not God!" "Is then truth blasphemy of God? What is my crime,--that I love you? What then are you in the sight of God, that you are surrounded by such enkindling darts? Are you His archangel--His cherub? Turn not away from me; I am not going to reproach you--not you, nor the saints, nor God. It was not Satan taught me all this. I have read the great book that you call Holy Scriptures through from beginning to end. I have tried to find a place in it which counts the love of woman as a sin, but I have found none such. It was only a human being who could hit upon the unnatural thought that there were human beings who could not love. Let the cowl cover the man who could impose such a covering--whose heart dared not beat under it. Is not such an act a sin against God? Is not this the murder of a human being--this slow killing of one in the likeness of God? Does the poisoner do anything worse when he gives his victims the means of passing away slowly? Have not other men discovered the antidote for it? You do not know this perhaps. See! As easy as it is to put on this sable cowl, this shroud for a living body, just so easy is it to strip it off. Do not flee! Stay here--listen to me. I might have a sin to confess. I promise you I will not kill, but I will call back into life a dead man, and that is indeed a sin heavy enough. You are this dead man. I have mourned you hundreds of times. Allow me to call you forth from your cold tomb by my tears. Listen to me. We will go from here right to Transylvania, where the Hungarian belief flourishes. We will go out to the Protestant church. Many are doing it already, you know. A third of the land is Protestant; I am sure they cannot all go to Hell. Nobody can persecute us there. See! I have two iron chests full of treasure; there we can live like lords in luxury and splendor, such as you were accustomed to before you gave over your lands to the Jesuits. We'll snap our fingers at the world. Or, if it pleases you better to be poor and God-fearing, I am willing. I will go with you to the poorest village, where there is a tower with a weather-vane; there you shall become a Calvinist preacher, a rector, or a Levite; I will be your faithful wife; will wash and weave, spin flax, and endure misery; I will become God-fearing, my lips shall forget to scold and curse, and shall learn to sing psalms. If I should become quarrelsome, you may beat me, shut me up, and make me fast, and I will be always faithful to you; only throw aside this cloak of death." The temptation was strong. When passion and sorrow blend together in one flame, then perhaps the heart of a dead man may withstand. But the youth was protected by his talisman--that other face on the other side of the Waag. The monk's cowl alone would not have protected his heart against these darts; his ascetic vows, the sacred oil, would have been a weak safeguard against the charm of this Circe. But the loving, suffering face of the maid of Mitosin stood between them like Heaven. The sunbeam smites in vain on the summit of the Alps, for this is already in Heaven, and Heaven is cold. Tihamer had left his heart before the altar in Mitosin,--it was not to be found. "Return, poor sinner," he said with the gentleness of a confessor, "God will pardon your rebellious thoughts, and will set you free from this evil spirit that has possessed you. Learn to pray." "I will not learn to pray!" cried the woman excitedly. "When you read the liturgy at mass, I always say to myself: It is not true! It is not true! It is not true! When you sing the hymn of praise to the Holy Mother, I murmur to myself, Love me, and not the Virgin Mother; You are my life! you are my death! you are my devil! you are my idol! if you wish to make me blessed, make me blessed here below, and in the future I will be condemned in your stead." "Then let your condemnation begin here below," said Father Peter, aroused from his monastic calm. "For if it is true that you can love a man to the extent of despising the whole world and renouncing the blessedness of Heaven, then indeed will it be the torments of Hell for you to see the man you love passing daily before you like the vision of one dead, like a ghost in the clear daylight, like a phantom in a living body--to see him, and to say to yourself, 'You put to death this man, you threw this shroud over him, you closed the grave upon him, and neither violence nor prayer nor the magic of Hell can wake him up again!' It was you who killed me. I am your victim. I am the ghost that pursues you. I am your judgment from God!" Idalia shuddered convulsively as she lay on the ground, and bit her bare arms. "When I was sent here to you," continued Father Peter, "I begged the Prior to send me into the desert of Arabia among the wild Druses rather than to your house: he left me only one choice, I might go as servant of the Holy Inquisition in Spain, or come here. I made my choice. I preferred to endure torture rather than to torture others. But believe me, he who endures the touch of hot oil does not suffer such torment as I do when your hot breath touches me; and the Spanish boot does not so crush the bones of the victim, as my heart is crushed under your accursed passion; and yet I came here although I knew that you would pursue me with this frightful love of yours: and I shall stay here, although I know that you will very soon torture me to death with your still more frightful hatred. Your house is my torture-chamber--I am here to suffer to the end." Idalia fell lifeless upon the cold marble. "May God pardon you," whispered the youth, "I pardon you. May you be able to pardon yourself." With that he raised her up from the floor, held her firmly with his strong hands by the shoulder, and so compelled her to remain seated and look him in the eye. "Finally, rest assured that I will accomplish what I was sent here for; your son will I guard, protect, and train to good. Let no one venture to do him any harm. The Fool I shall drive from his side, and shall no longer suffer him to poison the child's dreams with his frightful tales. You have cast him off. I will adopt him; and from this time he shall be my son, and shall never again come near you. I am prepared to have you deal with his spiritual father as you did with his father in the flesh." With these words, he let go his grasp and withdrew. Idalia stood for some time like a living statue in her white gown, while her flowing hair enveloped her bare arms. Then she shuddered and dragged herself to the wall, like a wild beast fatally shot; there she found a support on which she laid her head--it was cold marble, the base of the statue of her dead husband. The cold stone cooled her, perhaps,--the fever that throbbed in her temples. Father Peter went back to his lonely quarters, and found the child still resting quietly as he had left him. The child was sleeping sweetly and smiling in his dreams. _ |
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