University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
THE WONDERS OF ST. ARELINE.

No sooner had the oaken panel closed behind
him, than the Duke found himself cautiously
groping his way in utter darkness, being guided
by the sound of the footsteps of the Monk.

Presently the Monk laid hand upon the Duke's
shoulder.

“Kneel, mortal, kneel,” he exclaimed in a
voice which the Duke thought wondrously changed
of a sudden, “kneel and behold the wonders
of St. Areline! Speak not upon the peril of thy
immortal soul!”

Upon the pavement of stone the Duke sank
down, and the Monk began to murmur certain
mysterious words, in a low, yet deep tone, and
thus he continued for the space of the fourth part
of an hour, when a light was seen dimly gleaming
at one end of the place, and presently another and
another, and gradually increasing in radiance they
soon appeared to the wondering eyes of the Duke,
dancing within the surface of a vast mirror of
dazzling steel. Strange it was that although the
meteors,—for such they seemed,—grew more brilliant
every moment, and shed a more intense
brightness along the surface of the mirror in
which they shone, yet not a ray of light escaped
to illumine the apartment, and the figures of the
Duke and the Monk were wrapt in mid-night
shadow.

And now soft clouds of feathery mist began
to roll within the surface of the mirror, and the
meteors gradually faded away into an universal
brightness, which like the mellow beams that herald
the coming day, poured a flood of rosy light
over the tumultuous chaos within the dazzling
steel.

“Behold!” cried the Monk, “behold the blessed
St. Areline!”

A dim and ghastly form arose from amid the
rolling clouds, far in the distance; nearer it drew
and nearer, and presently the outlines of a nun,
attired in the solemn hood, and sweeping robes of
white, became clear and perceptible. Advancing
to the front of the mirror with a gliding motion,
the hands of the spectre were folded upon its
breast, and the hood of white, hung drooping
over its face.

The Duke trembled with terror, and his brow
was wet with large drops of moisture that oozed
from his shivering skin.

“Mortal!” exclaimed a voice, soft as the tones
of a spirit of light,—“mortal, what wouldst thou
know?” The voice came from the shrouded face
of the spectre.

With tremulous voice, and as if urged by some
invisible power, the Duke shrieked forth—

“I would know my doom—I would know my
fate!”

The hood fell back from the head of the Spectre,
and its arms slowly extended!

“O Jesu!” shrieked the Duke,—“Look, look!
the skeleton hands, the fleshless skull, the hollow
eyes! One hand grasps a cross, and one a
grinning skull.—Look, look!”

“Speak not!” whispered the Monk, “speak
not upon pain of eternal doom!”

The voice again sounded through the cell.

“Dost thou seek in the name of the Holy One?
Dost thou ask trusting in his Saints?”

“I do!”

“Thou art answered!” and the bare and hideous
bones of the spectre head were covered,
quick as a flash of light, with ruddy and healthy
flesh, the hollow sockets gleamed with dark and
brilliant orbs, and the skeleton hands glowed with
life, as skin of rosy loveliness shrouded the disjointed
bones.

“Thou art answered!” and as the spectre
whispered the words, a skeleton form came gliding
along the mirror, holding an hour-glass in its
fleshless hand.

“Behold!” exclaimed the vision pointing to the
things of graves, behold thy doom?”

A shriek of horror came from the lips of the
Duke.

“O, horror of horrors!” he shouted, “It is the
form of Death!—Look! look! Behold! He turns,
he turns with a ghastly smile—he points to the
hourglass!” The tyrant, assassin and betrayer
started forward with every nerve quivering with
the intensity of his terror. “O God of Heaven!
The Sands of the glass are run!”

“Ha!” shrieked the Monk, with a wild yell,
that sounded like the howl of a dying war-horse.
“Heaven wills it, thy sands are run, thy doom
is fixed!”

A stream of light poured around the cell, brighter
than the blaze of the noon-day sun, and a
clap of thunder shook the pillars to their very centre.

With his eyes rolling with affright, the Duke
glanced upward, and beheld the Monk standing
erect, his arms outstretched, and his hood cast
backward from his face.

“O God! Thou here! Albertine—thou here!”

“Ha! It is I!—Thy fate—thy curse—thy
doom!”

The Duke felt himself seized in a grasp of
iron, and hurriedly dragged along the pavement
of stone.

In a moment he heard the sharp spring of a
door closing behind him, and brushing his hand
over his eyes, to restore his fading vision, he looked
around. A spur of the whitened steep on which
the convent was founded, arising some twenty
feet above the body of the mass of rock, was imbeded
in the darkened wall of the tower, with its
summit extending in a platform some three feet
square, toppling over the dark abyss below. Level
as the sun-dial and smooth as polished steel, the
summit of the rock, projecting from the tower,
might scarce afford a resting place for footstep of
human thing. In silence and in awe the Duke
gazed around. Above was the moonlit sky, below
far, far below, a hundred fathoms down sunk the
dark and shadowy abyss, separated from the waters
of the lake by a ridge of rocks, that arose along
the shores of the mountain tarne, overlooking the
sullen blackness of the impenetrable void, on one
side, while on the other towered and frowned the
walls of the gloomy convent. Gazing hurriedly
around, the Duke beheld the walls of the Monastery,
extending on either side of the tower, in whose
stones the platform-rock was imbedded, all smooth,
even and moss-grown; at his back leading into
the cell of St. Areline, was the secret door, fashioned
in complete resemblance to the wall around,
fast closed and secured, while high overhead arose
the dark and frowning fabric of the tower, its rugged
outline, rising like a thing of omen into the
dim blue of the midnight sky.

This platform of rock was never looked upon
by the peasantry of the valley, save with wonder
and with awe—a thousand dark traditions, named
the tower as the scene of many a deed of murder,
and a thousand legends dyed the platform-stone
with the crimson drops of innocent blood.

“Where am I,” shrieked the Duke with a low,
murmured whisper. “It is a dream, a dream
of horror!”

“Thou art in the temple of my vengeance!” the
response came hissing between the clenched teeth
of the monk. “Behold its roof, yon sky, the walls,
the boundless horizon, the floor, the wide earth;
and the place of sacrifice, yon bottomless abyss!”