13. XIII.
Revelry of all sorts, indulgences the most wild,
excesses the most licentious, followed the conclusion
of the dreadful ceremonial in the castle of
Oberfeldt. A luxurious banquet was prepared,
and every temptation of gross and festering debauch,
common to that era, was provided and
partaken of by that melancholy circle of uncongenial
confederates. The terms of the will were
read to them by Conrade, who took a leading part
in their festivities. But, though of appalling and
curious nature, there was but one of all the college
that heeded its conditions. That was Rodolph.
He listened in a vague sort of consciousness.
His feelings and thoughts were too various
and crowded to suffer him to think correctly; and
the emotions with which he felt himself seized, were
rather those of a young, unsophisticated heart,
finding itself, for the first time, in a novel and
strange situation, than of a thinking mind engaged
in analyzing it. Conrade discovered this, and
plied all his arts, which were neither mean nor
few, in order to dissipate the lover's melancholy.
He succeeded in part. He dwelt with ridicule
upon the passages of the will which seemed most
to have impressed the youth; then adroitly painting
the happiness which must follow the possession
of the fortune, in giving Bertha to his arms, he
had the satisfaction to discover that, by degrees,
the moody apprehensions of the youth wore rapidly
away. But still Rodolph could not relish
the associates around him, and with whom he found
himself, by his own act, associated in so strange a
brotherhood. Men he would have been ashamed
to know before, he now found himself connected
with in life and death. That death, too, now that
he was in the possession of the means of life,
seemed to have acquired terrors which it had not
some few hours ago. He had never asked himself
the difference of situation and mind between
the desperately hopeless man, and him to whom
the world is full of hope and promise. He was
yet to learn this difference. The glozing lips of
the tempter had persuaded him too readily to believe
that suicide at one moment and at another
was the same thing to the same person, and he had
admitted too readily a proposition so false, as one
entirely true. There are times when it is not difficult
to part with life — alas! how often is it the
case that we would rather give up heaven itself
than lose it!
