8. VIII.
At dawn we were summoned to the chamber of the baroness.
A crisis was at hand. His reverence, the cardinal —, whose
presence had been expected at a late hour in the day, and for
another purpose, had been solicited to attend in haste, and had
complied with Christian punctuality, with the demands of mortal
suffering. But his presence effected nothing. The miserable
woman clearly enough comprehended his words and exhortations.
She listened without look of acknowledgment, or regret, or repentance.
She heard his prayers for her safety, and a smile of
scorn might be seen to mantle upon her lips. The Host was
elevated in her sight, and the scorn deepened upon her countenance
as she beheld it. Truly was she strong in her weakness.
The sacred wafer was presented to her lips, but they were closed
inflexibly against it. The death struggle came on; a terrible
conflict between fate on the one hand and fearful passions on the
other. The images of horror will never escape from my memory.
They are engraven there for ever. She raised herself to a sitting
posture in the bed without assistance. The effort was momentary
only. But, in that moment, her glance, which was
fixed on me, was the very life-picture of a grinning and fiendish
malice. The expression horrified the spectators. His eminence
once more lifted the sacred emblem of salvation in her sight, and
the last effort of her struggling life was to dash it from his
hands. In that effort she sank back upon the pillows, a fresh
discharge of blood took place from her mouth, and strangulation
followed. The sufferings of the mortal had given place to those
of which there can be no mortal record.
And I was the master, undisputed, of all these domains. And
Bruno had gone, none knew whither. Nothing more could I
fathom of these mysteries, but there was one search that I instituted,
one discovery that I made, which tended to deepen them
yet more, in seeming to give them partial solution. That little
lake, I had it drained, and, just beneath the wall of the parapet,
we found the tiny skeleton of an infant — bleached and broken
into fragments, but sufficiently perfect to leave no doubt of its
original humanity. A rude fragment of stone such as composed
the outer wall enclosing the castle, lay upon its little ribs. Need
I say that I gathered up, with the solicitude of a nameless love,
every remnant of this little relic, that it was inurned with the
tenderest care, and consigned to sacred keeping, with the feelings
of one who knew not well that he might not even then possess,
though he had never known, the love of an angel sister.
