University of Virginia Library

12. XII.

That night the ceremonial was an awful one in
the great hall of Oberfeldt's castle. The body of
the suicide lay in state in the centre of the apartment,
which was illuminated with an intense glare,
shooting out from strangely large torches, borne
up by sable figures standing in its many niches
and embrasures. The corpse presented a sight
horried from its wounds, and hellish from it expression.
The head had been nearly severed from
the shoulders, by the desperate stroke which the
deceased had given himself. The eyes were unclosed;
the lids seemed to have been drawn in
under the brows, and the whites gleamed out with
a meteoric lustre, through the filmy humidity with
which death had wrapped them. The testamentary
document lay upon the breast of the deceased.
His hand, still grasping the fatal knife, with
all the bloody traces of the deed yet upon it, rested
upon the paper. Around him stood the persons
who were prepared to avail themselves of the
dreadful advantages of the will before them. Their

number was completed upon the entrance of Rodolph
and his friend. The lover looked upon
the scene with horror; but he had nerved himself
to the deed. He gazed vacantly upon his associates;
and his passing scrutiny did not serve to
reconcile him in any great degree to the step
which he was about to take. With the exception
of his friend Weickhoff, he saw none among the
assembled college before him who had any claim
to gentility. They were either debauchees, or
gamblers, spendthrifts, and wretches who fasten
themselves as a disease upon society, and contribute
to the corruption of that body upon which
they are engrafted. But he had no time for reflection.
Weickhoff led the way, and by his audacity
evidently controlled the rest. He drew the
document from the grasp of the suicide, and without
the pause of a second, dashed down his signature
in bloody characters at the foot of the conditional
pledge which followed the testament, and
to which its reference was special, and done after
the most approved legal requisitions of those ages.
The example was soon followed by the rest; and
signature after signature appeared upon the fatal
sheet, until Rodolph was the only one left who
had yet to sign. He lingered, and a light touch
of a finger pressed upon his wrist. It went like
a cold wind into the artery beneath. He looked
up in a tremor, and his eyes met those of Weickhoff.
What a glance did they encounter! So
bright, so cold; so ironical, yet so conciliating;
such a sneer, yet such a smile. There was a mad
prompter in the heart of the youth at that moment,
and he rushed forward to the body of the dead
man; he clutched the pen in his fingers, and began
writing the letters of his name after the rest. As
he wrote, to his great horror and suprise, the same
letters, as he severally wrote than, appeared one
after the other in a blank space in the body of the
instrument above. A sickness seized upon his
heart; but he desperately proceeded. The deed
was done — the name written — the contract was
completed; and, in the next moment, he felt himself
clasped in the arms of Weickhoff.

“Now, indeed, Rodolph, my friend, you are
mine,” was the exclamation of his comrade. What
a strength seemed in the nerves of Weickhoff!
The embrace nearly stifled him; and yet Weickhoff
was slender in the extreme; pale, even to
wanness; and with a general air of feebleness,
which looked rather like disease than stength or
life. Had Rodolph been asked the question before,
he wonld have unhesitatingly said that his
own were infinitely greater than the physical powers

of Weickhoff; yet now he seemed but an infant
in his grasp. But Weickhoff had been a traveller,
and Rodolph naturally enough concluded
that he had acquired hardihood by trial and adventure.