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Peter the Priest, a fiction by Maurus Jokai |
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Chapter 17. All Is Over |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. ALL IS OVER Idalia could not sleep that night. Satisfied revenge brings no sweet sleep! Frightful visions chased through her brain, in which the distorted faces of her disgraced victims haunted her. There is a maiden in a boat that the ice flood sweeps along, her cry is borne on the wind; and that man?--it is the one to whom Idalia has prayed, whom she has lost, and now she would give him over to neither man nor devil. The beautiful woman had many stately rooms, and yet there was not space enough for her. Long since had she wept through them all. Back and forth she went to the balcony and blew her breath on the panes in warm rings through which she could look out at the Waag. A great waste field of ice stretched out before her, reaching from Mitosin Castle to Madocsany; the moon lighted up a landscape still as death; about three o'clock in the morning, as she gazed out from her balcony over the wide waste, like a mad woman, it suddenly seemed to her as if a black spot moved over there and came nearer and nearer the castle; as it came nearer, it proved to be the figure of a man; the nearer it approached, stumbling among the ice blocks, the more evident became its purpose to come straight to the castle. It was somebody from Mitosin! Idalia wakened her people and gave orders to carry out a stretcher and help the man who was with difficulty struggling through the ice, and bring him to the castle. This man was Master Mathias. When brought before Idalia, his face was hardly recognizable, it was so blue with frost and pain, and its features were so distorted. "I came from Mitosin," he gasped out, sinking down upon the bearskin before the fire where they had laid him. "Bring him a cup of warm wine," ordered the lady. "No, no! no more wine," he groaned, "leave us alone. I have had enough of that." When left alone with the lady of the castle, he wrung her hands and sank upon his knees. "For God's sake, save me, most gracious Lady, I entreat you!" "What ails you?" "The Lord of Mitosin has poisoned me and himself too. May God punish him for it. Help me, or I must die." "How can I help you?" "Don't begrudge me that. You know very well I have been poisoned by a drinking cup, although there was no poison to be seen in it. They say that when you poisoned your husband, you did the same thing: you drank from the same cup with him, so as not to excite his suspicions, and drank the poison; but after he died, you went aside and took the antidote. You lived and he died." "You're mad!" "No, I am not. Give me the antidote. You know the secret. If you set me free, I'll tell you a secret you will not be sorry to hear." "What secret is that?" "The secret where Father Peter is now." At this name, the lady sprang toward Master Mathias, raised him up from the bearskin, and laid him on a couch. "What, you know where he is! Is he still alive?" "Yes, he is, and no harm has been done yet!" "Where is he?" "Give me the antidote quickly." "No, no; there is time yet. I must have the secret first, there is no escape for you until then." Large drops of sweat stood out on the brow of the tortured man. "My master made me promise on the Holy Gospels that I would not betray it to any body. I shall go to Hell for this." "You'll go there anyway. The question is whether you will go sooner or later. If you tell me what you know, the devils will have to wait for you; if you keep it to yourself, you'll have to go at once. Speak at once or die." "You'll surely give me the medicine?" "Yes, there you have it now. While you were speaking, I dropped it into your mouth. I carry it with me always in the stone of my ring. See how green it is, gleaming in the darkness; if I should give you all of it, you would live a hundred years longer." The poor fellow in the agony of death told all. When he spoke of the chamber of the dead, and of the cavern of treasure, Idalia was convinced that he spoke the truth. No one who had not been there and seen them could know of these places. "Good," she said, "now take this. Go home to Tepla to your daughter, and say nothing of what you know." But what the beautiful lady really gave Master Mathias was anything but an antidote; it was a still more active poison, so there should be no time for him to communicate his secret to a third. When Master Mathias had dragged himself to Tepla to his daughter's house, his tongue hardly moved in his throat, and he could only stammer: "Father Peter--walled in--under-ground--with treasures--in Mitosin--still alive--I am undone." More he could not say; by the time the priest came, he was already dead. * * * * * Idalia was left alone with the secret she had extorted. Suddenly her old passion blazed up again to its full height like a column of fire. Her beloved was still alive; he was only buried, walled in deep underground,--abandoned by God and man, left to the company of the corpses, with no sound save those of the silent night; robbed of his loved one, betrayed in despair, with nobody to expect but grim death. What if somebody should go down to him in this frightful grave, and should look at him through that small opening; would not such a countenance seem like that of an angel looking down from Heaven? Would he not look upon her as a goddess who should bring him up from the depths of the grave into God's world again? Would it be possible for him not to yield to the force of that love which opens graves even, and will not leave him to God or the devil? She did not hesitate long, but threw her black cloak around her shoulders, placed a dagger and a sword at her belt, and looked for a strong axe: "It will be convenient," she thought, "to break through the heavy walls." She lighted her lantern, and stole out of the castle. Toward morning, a thick fog had settled over the place, so that nobody saw which way she went. In fact nobody ever knew which way she had gone. About six o'clock that morning, the whole country was aroused by a frightful underground explosion convulsing the earth. Towers fell, castles rocked, the Jesuit monastery fell in, and Mitosin Chapel was reduced to a heap of stones. Those who were awake at the time maintained that they saw a giant column rise up from the middle of the Waag and blaze on high. The clouds of smoke were visible for some time through the fog, and seemed like an army of darkness. The broken ice began to heave and roll violently, not only forward, but in all directions, overspreading the valley and sweeping away before it villages and forests. After the flood had subsided and the Waag returned to its bed, evil traces were left behind in thick layers of round pebbles; for the Waag is not like those friendly rivers which when they overflow cover the earth with a fertile deposit. In the excitement over the disturbance of the elements, people forgot the frightful family history that had just been enacted in the two castles. A few days later, relatives of the Likovay family found the body of Lord Grazian in the agent's quarters of the castle. The swollen flood had not forced its way there; but not one stone upon another was left of the little church. The devastating explosion had opened a way through this for the streaming flood of waters, whose irresistible current ground stone and wood to powder. The same fate met the statue of Nepomeck at Madocsany. The Hussite passage was filled with stones, and the flood took its path from there over the country. It was not for a long, long time that the members of the Likovay family began to inquire what had become of the treasure that Lord Grazian had received from the Lady of Madocsany for his estate; but never a trace of it was found. And the whole of this story, from beginning to end, is a true story. The dates are kept in the family archives: and on the lips of the people the name of Father Peter still lives. The place is often visited by earthquakes, and at such times they say, "Father Peter has turned over in his grave." And every time that Mitosin Castle and estate is transferred to a new purchaser, it is stipulated in the contract, that if the buried treasure is found, it shall be given back to its rightful owners. But the people say that the treasure will never be found, until Father Peter has been set free from his living grave; and this may be true. [THE END] _ |
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