26. XXVI.
Let us skip over the intervening period. Nothing
need be said in all this time of the increasing
mental agony of Rodolph. It will be sufficient
to know that his despair and suffering were
even greater than during the year before. Life
had grown dearer to him; he was bound to it by
new ties; and Bertha and his child grew lovelier
and more necessary to his heart, with every increase
of the doubt and the dread which were gathering
and groping there.
The night came, and, to his surprise, Hans Busacher
was again his visiter.
“I am but now returned from the borders,”
were his first words; “and knowing that your
course lay with mine to-night, I concluded to stop
in passing, and bear you company.”
“What an alteration in his voice!” said Rodolph
to himself. “I have certainly heard that
voice frequently before.”
Thus he mused as he looked upon his visiter,
and he shuddered with the strangest emotions. He
parted from Bertha, suppressing his grief as well
as he could, but full of the most painful presentiments.
“Come back soon, dear Rodolph,” she cried
to him entreatingly, and he promised her, but with
a choking accent.
The companions soon reached Oberfeldt castle,
and, one by one, the several members of the college
were soon assembled together. Let us not
dwell upon the preparatory display on this occasion.
We already know the rites and orgies
which were initial. We have already seen the
decorations of the dismal chamber, and the dreadful
hall. They were now the same. Rodolph
well remembered each fearful characteristic. The
same scene was renewed in all its parts; and, amid
crowding forms, and stimulated even into madness
by similar objects, sights, and sounds, as had attended
the proceedings of the previous anniversary,
he, with the rest, advanced to the iron vase.
They drew their billets in turn, and when Rodolph
lifted his into the light, the doom of self-murder
was decreed to him in characters of blood.
