The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano Part 2

"Because I had given my word to my father," continued Balthasar; "and because it is a principle of mine, that man must never gratify his pa.s.sions, least of all that of love. My conviction is, that our life is a state of torment and woe; and the more we try to escape from these feelings, the more awful vengeance do our terrours afterward take upon us. As to why this is so, who can fathom that question?"

"This belief," answered Edward, "is extremely strange, and at variance with all our wishes, nay with everyday experience."

"O how scanty then must your experience have been hitherto!" replied the old man. "Everything lives and moves, only to die and to rot: everything feels, only to feel pangs. Our inward agony spurs us on to what we call joy; and all wherewith spring and hope and love and pleasure beguile mankind, is only the inverted sting of pain. Life is woe, hope sadness, thought and reflexion despair."

"And supposing all to be so," said Edward somewhat timidly, "do we not find comfort and help in religion?"

The old man lifted up his eyes and gazed fixedly in his young companion's face: his dark look grew brighter, not however with pleasure or any soft emotion; but so strange a smile ran across his pale furrowed features, that it lookt very much like scorn; and Edward involuntarily thought of the miner's words.

"Let us turn aside from this theme for today," said the old man with his usual gloomy air; "we shall probably find time hereafter to speak of it. Thus I lived on in my state of d.a.m.nation, and the thought of Elizabeth shone with a friendly but heart-piercing light into the h.e.l.l around me. Still the frenzy of life had laid fast hold on me, and made me too take my place in the vast bedlam, and go through my part under the great task-master. People tell you that death cures all; others again look forward to being transported from one workhouse to another, where they shall keep on playing the fool through all eternity and evaporating in an endless succession of illusions. With a little money--it would be ridiculous were I to mention the sum; many take so much merely to fill their bellies--I engaged in a small line of business. It succeeded. I made a petty mercantile speculation. It turned out well. I entered into partners.h.i.+p with a man of considerable property. It seemed as if I had a talent of always guessing and foreboding where gain and profit were lying hid in distant countries, in uninviting, or hazardous undertakings; something like what is said of the divining rod, that it will hit upon metals and upon water. As many gardeners have a lucky hand, so in trade I prospered in every, even the most unpromising speculation. It was neither strength of understanding nor extent of knowledge, but mere luck. One becomes a man of understanding however, so soon as one has luck. My partner was astonisht; and, as he had a small estate here, we removed into this country, where till the time of his death we went on enlarging the number of our houses of business and manufactories. When he died, and I had settled my accounts with his heir, I might already have been accounted a rich man. But a feeling of awe came upon me along with this property as they call it. For how great is the responsibility for managing it rightly! And why were so many honest men unfortunate, while with me everything throve so unaccountably? After a number of painful years my wife also died: without children, without friends, I was again alone. How singularly that blind being, that men call fortune, pampered me, you may see from the following story. I always felt an aversion to play at cards or any other game for money. For what does a gambler do, but declare that he will exalt the wretched stuff, to which even as money he attaches such an inordinate value, into an oracle and a promulgation of the divine will? And then he stakes his heart and soul on this delusion: the freaks of chance, things utterly without meaning, are to calculate and make out for him by certain fantastical combinations, what he is worth, how he is favoured: his dark pa.s.sions start up when he supposes that this chance neglects him; he triumphs when he fancies it sides with him; his blood flows more rapidly, his head is in an uprore, his heart throbs tumultuously, and he is more wretched than the madman that is lying in chains, when every card, down to the very last, turns up against him.

Look you, this is the king of the creation in his patcht beggar's garb, which he takes to be a royal robe."

The old man almost laught, and Edward replied: "Such is the case with all life; it runs along on a narrow line between truth and fancy, between reality and delusion."

"Be it so!" cried Balthasar. "But no more of this. I was only going to tell you how I let myself be persuaded by my partner in the last year of his life to put for once into the neighbouring lottery. I did so against my own feelings; because these inst.i.tutions appear to me deserving of the severest punishment. By them the state sanctions highway-robbery and murder. Even without such things ill-fated man is immoderately inflamed by the l.u.s.t of gain. I had already forgotten the paltry concern, when I heard I had gained the great prize: after receiving the payment it never let me rest. What the vulgar fable of evil spirits, had come into my house along with these money-bags. This unblest sum supplied the funds for the hospital for sick old women in the valley a couple of leagues off, the building of which has been made such a merit of by senseless newspaper-scribes. What had I contributed toward it? Not even a stroke of the pen. Now you will understand how my perpetual gains, and the sums that flowed in to me from every venture, compelled me to plunge into fresh speculations, and how this has been going on year after year upon an ever-widening scale. And thus there is neither rest nor pause, until death will at length put the last full stop to the matter for this bout. Then some one else will of course begin to rave on just where I left off, and the same invisible power will perhaps meet his folly under the shape of misfortune."

Edward knew not what to say. "You are not yet used," the old man continued, "to my words and expressions, because we have never yet talked upon these matters; you do not yet know my way of thinking; and as these feelings, these views of life are still new to you, you are surprised. Believe me, my good fellow, the only thing that keeps one from going mad, is swimming silently along with the stream, letting five always pa.s.s for even, and fitting oneself to that which cannot be changed. At the same time there is also another remedy that may serve to keep one afloat. One may lay down certain fixt unshakable principles, a line of conduct from which one never swerves. Money, wealth, gain, the circulation and the flowing of property and of the precious metals toward every quarter, through every relation of life, and every region of the earth, are one of the very strangest devices the world ever hit upon. It is a creature of necessity like every thing else; and as there is nothing on which pa.s.sion has seized with such force, it has bred it up to be a monster more chimerical and wild than anything the fever of a heated fancy ever dreamt of. This monster is incessantly devouring and preying on all that comes within its reach; nothing satiates it; it gnaws and crunches the bones of the dest.i.tute, and laps up their tears. That in London and Paris before a palace, where a single banquet costs a thousand pieces of gold, a poor man should die of starvation, when the hundredth part of a piece of gold might save him,--that families should perish in frantic despair,--that there should be madness and suicide in the very room where a couple of paces off gamblers are rioting in gold,--all this seems so natural to us, such a matter of course, that we no longer feel any surprise at it; and everybody takes for granted with cold-blooded apathy, that it all must be so, and cannot be otherwise.

How every state pampers this money-monster!--indeed it cannot help doing so--and trains it up to be more ferocious! In many countries wealth can no longer increase except among the rich, whereby the poor will be still more impoverisht, until at length Time will cast up the dismal sum, and then draw a b.l.o.o.d.y pen across the appalling amount.

When I found myself thus rich, I held it to be my duty to keep this wealth in controul, so far as man can, and to tame the wild beast.

Unquestionably the creation has been doomed to woe; else war, disease, famine, pain, and pa.s.sion would not run riot and lay waste so.

Existence and torment are one and the same word: nevertheless every one who does not mean wantonly to play the fiend, is bound to alleviate misery wherever he can. There is no property in the sense which most people put on the word; there ought not to be any, and the attempt to keep hold of it is G.o.dless. Still worse is it to spread calamity by the influence of wealth. Thus then I administer mine, so as to help my neighbours, to find work for the poor, care and remedies for the sick; and by an ever-increasing activity I strive to bring things into such a state, that as many as possible shall eat their bread without tears and anguish, shall gather pleasure from their children and their occupations, and that, so far as my eye and arm can reach, the creation may not be the object of as many curses here, as in other villages and towns."

"The blessings you diffuse," Edward threw in, "must make you also happy."

"Blessings!" repeated the old man and shook his head. "It is all a mere drop in the ocean. How short is the time within which even the child that is now sucking at the breast must needs die! This time, these hundreds and thousands of years, how they mock at our frail edifices! how Oblivion triumphs in every part of the earth, with ruins crumbling beneath her feet! and Destruction, while with unfeeling malignity she tramples every form of life in the dust! I have just been comforting my good Elizabeth today. But can I really comfort her?

She is for ever haunted by the thought of her destiny, of her life, of her lost youth, of her having flung herself away on a worthless being, of her having brought a tiger as her son into the world. In her dreams she is visited by the feeling, whether asleep or waking it pursues her, and thrills through every fibre, that she once loved me, perhaps loves me still; and so her heart has to bear my wretchedness along with her own. True she may now and then relish a morsel somewhat better; she may now and then forget herself, perhaps over some silly book, delighting in the good fortune of others, and feeling interest in afflictions which are merely faint shadows of her own; and this sentimental folly may help her over half a dozen minutes a little more at her ease. Verily it is a grand achievement that I have been able to do this for her. The consciousness however, that neither her husband nor her son, the offspring of her own blood and body, and surely of her soul too, is to know anything of my bounty, as it would be called, or else her sufferings will increase--do you not perceive how pitiful this, and the whole of life is? But let us break off, and tell me instead what news you have heard."

Edward informed him that William had again gone off suddenly and without a.s.signing any cause. "I am glad of it," answered the old man; "I always took him for our thief, and winkt hard in looking at him, that I might not ruin him utterly: this indulgence however must have come to an end. I was exceedingly fond of him, and for that very reason only hated him the more."

"How do you mean?" asked the young man.

"Why," replied the other, "foolishly enough I felt charmed by his countenance, by the soft sound of his voice, by his whole look and air: this perverse sympathy will keep following us everywhere. I took a liking to him: and catching my heart in this piece of folly, I punisht myself by conceiving a downright aversion to the fellow, as we should and must do to everything we are greatly delighted with."

Edward wanted to ask further questions, but the striking of the clock called him to his business, and being dismist by the old man he went away, with a mult.i.tude of thoughts concerning this singular conversation, to meditate further upon it at leisure.

Whenever Edward's thoughts now recurred, as they often did, to the nature of his situation, that and every thing connected with it, the appointment which had fixt him in this secluded spot, the business he was engaged in, as well as the persons with whom he had to hold intercourse, appeared to him in a light totally different from before.

He was loth to acknowledge to himself how forcibly and singularly his imagination had been wrought upon by his late discourse with Rose.

Hitherto he had only lookt on her as a pleasing child; but now the lovely girl became an object to which expectations and silent hopes attacht themselves: he watcht her more attentively; he talked oftener to her and more at length; and the budding of her youthful soul, the frank artlessness of her thoughts, interested his heart more and more.

And then, when he recollected the hideous, sallow-faced Eleazar, with his surly morose temper, and thought that this tender flower had already in secret devoted herself as a sacrifice to so odious a creature, his anger was moved by this absurd project, which at other times again he could not help smiling at. Eleazar had been absent for some days past. He had not taken much pains to conceal that he was going into the lonely, remote parts of the mountains in search of those marks which he had read of in the master miner's book. This absurdity sorted well with his strange dreamy character; for he was perpetually poring over books of magic and alchemical treatises, had a laboratory in his room, and would often boast in pretty intelligible hints that he had found the philosopher's stone. When Edward bethought himself of his singular conversation with his old master, and of the sentiments he had given vent to during that confidential hour, he no longer regarded it as improbable that Balthasar should have been led by his wild moody whims to design his blooming foster-daughter for the wife of the gloomy Eleazar. A shudder came over him to think with what dark and perplext spirits he was so closely linkt; his head went round with the giddiness of all about him, and he seemed almost to lose his hold on himself. This made him still more regret the loss of young William: at the same time his annoyances were increast by the robberies of the warehouse, which instead of ceasing were carried on with more audacity than ever. He himself had entertained a slight suspicion of William, and was quite unable to make out how the crime was perpetrated.

In this mood it was with no very friendly welcome that he met Eleazar on his return from his wild-goose chace. Eleazar too grew highly indignant, when he heard that the robberies had been continued during his absence with the greatest impudence; and as he could not justly charge Edward with any negligence or supineness, this first conversation between them, little as they had ever been disposed to agree, took a tone of still more bitterness than usual. As soon as his hateful companion was gone, Edward determined to do what he now could not help regarding as his indispensable duty, by speaking more seriously than ever to Herr Balthasar on this subject.

These depredations, which were prosecuted with so much security, excited the wonder of the whole neighbourhood; and at the public-house in the town there was often much talk about them. Old Conrad was sitting in the wooden arm-chair beside the stove, and was just telling the fat thriving landlord the details of the last robbery, when a stranger came in, who immediately gave himself out to be a travelling miner. The stranger was much younger than Conrad, and therefore at first modestly said but little, and merely asked a few questions, insinuating however that there might probably be means of soon bringing the matter to light, if his advice were but to be followed.

By these hints the curiosity of some peasants who happened to be present, having come with corn from the plain several miles off to this town high up among the mountains, was vehemently aroused. Conrad, who lookt upon himself as the wisest person in the company, became grave and monosyllabic, waiting to hear what this new device or scheme for detecting the thief, would end in.

"You must lay a charm," said the stranger, "which the thief, when he has once set foot within it, will not be able to escape from; and so, as soon as the sun rises, you are sure to find him."

"And what is such a charm to be made of?" asked Andrew, who was the forwardest of the peasants.

Conrad laught aloud and scornfully, while he said: "Clownish dolts, don't thrust in your tongues, when people are debating about matters of art and science; stick to your straw and your chaff; they are things you are better skilled in handling. Proceed, knowing sir," he added, looking with suspicious graciousness toward the stranger; "how do you mean that such a charm or spell is to be prepared, so as to be certain of its effect?"

The stranger, whose pale face formed a singular contrast with the stout dusky-hued Conrad, the fat host, and the puffy cheeks of the peasants, said with a somewhat stifled voice: "Yew twigs cut and peeled beneath the new moon, and then boiled at the first quarter in a decoction of wolf's milk and hemlock, which itself must have been previously made on the selfsame night, are to be stuck in the earth, while some words that I know are repeated, at certain distances round the spot where the robbery is committed; and the thief, be he ever so daring, and ever so learned in laying spells and breaking them, will be unable to step out of this circle, and will stand in fear and trembling, till the persons who set the magical trap pounce upon him in the morning. I have often seen this practist in Hungary and Transylvania, and it has always succeeded."

Conrad was about to answer, but the pert Andrew was beforehand with him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with certain verses of the Bible; and when he had said these words, every thief, whether he was in the wood, on the high road, or in the field, was forced to halt on the sudden in the middle of his running,--or, if he was riding on horseback, it was just the same--and to wait in terrour and affright, so that even children if they chose might seize hold of him."

Conrad gave the peasant a look of inexpressible contempt, and then turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with sorcery and witchcraft, because he hates every kind of superst.i.tion, even that which is pious and unavoidable, much more then one of this sort, which he must needs hold to be utterly accurst. Besides you don't even know in what way the thief goes to work, so as to take proper measures against him."

"What do you mean?" asked the stranger, somewhat abasht, but whose curiosity was stirred.

"Have you never heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the earth and into the heart of a mountain?"

"In Spain," replied the stranger, "there are said to be men, who without the help of a divining-rod can find out treasures and metals with their bodily eyes, even though they should be lying ever so deep under rocks or forests."

"Just so," proceeded Conrad; "Zahori, or Zahuri is the name borne, as I have heard tell, by the people who have carried their power and knowledge to this pitch. Only n.o.body knows whether one man can learn this of another, or whether it is a natural gift, or proceeds from a league with the evil one."

"From the devil certainly!" cried Andrew interrupting him, having been gradually poking in his face nearer and nearer.

"I am not talking to you, lowland lubber," said Conrad; "you would do better to seat yourself behind the stove; that is your right place when people are canva.s.sing grave questions of science."

Andrew muttered, and angrily drew back his chair a little; whereupon Conrad went on; "Look you man, this art in many countries is not the only one, nor even the highest, profitable as it may be for discovering veins of metal, or even gold and silver. Of much greater weight however, and far more formidable are those who have a power in their eyes to do one an injury, and with a single glance can infect one with a disease, a fever, a jaundice, a fit of madness, or even look one dead. The better and G.o.dlier part of these persons hence always of their own accord wear a bandage before one of their eyes--for this power will often exist only on one side--so that they may walk about and deal with their neighbours, without harming them."

"Of these I have never heard," replied the stranger.

"That is matter of surprise to me," continued the old miner with the most perfect gravity: "for since you come from Hungary, and probably were born there, where you have such a sight of vampires, or blood-sucking corpses, such swarms of goblins and manikins of the mountains, dwarfs and subterraneous creatures, that will often come across you even by broad daylight, I fancied everything belonging to witchcraft must be in high vogue there and generally notorious."

"No," answered the traveller, "I never up to this present instant heard anything of these prodigies, much as I have seen and myself experienced that by such as have not been so far from home may be deemed remarkable enough."

"Now then," said Conrad taking up his word again, "when the Zahori, as they call him, has once got so far that with his naked eye, instead of quietly seeing the treasures beneath his feet, he can give anyone a fit of sickness or put him to death, he has only one step further to become perfect and a master in his art. Look you, my good stranger, when he has thus reacht the highest degree, he will set himself down before a dish of baked meat, while it is still standing in the oven covered up and shut down, and without anybody being able to observe him will with his mere eyes devour you a goose, or a hare, or whatever it may be, swallowing it up so clean and neat, that, if he chooses, not a bone will be left. Place some nuts before him or melons, he will eat up all the kernel or pulp out of them, without making even a single scratch on the sh.e.l.l or rind, but leaving them undamaged just as if everything was still within. He has had a good meal; n.o.body can prove, or even suspect what he has done; and others have nothing left them but a fruitless search."

"The devil again!" cried Andrew; "that's the trick I should like, if I could learn the art."

"An artist of this sort," continued the old miner, "may however ascend a great deal higher; for such things after all would be merely a jest.

If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die miserably, or will sink into beggary, while he himself becomes as rich as ever he pleases."

"It makes ones mouth water!" cried Andrew unconsciously, so completely was he carried away by the visions presented to him.

Conrad turned his back upon him, drew his chair nearer to the miner, and then said: "If we had not this rabble so close at our side, I could explain the matter to you with greater tranquillity of mind. The truth is this. When the Zahuri has been promoted from being an apprentice or pounding-lad, to be a brother, and then a master or mine-surveyor, he will seat himself on his chair in his room, here overhead in this inn, or wherever it may be, will think of the warehouse of our old man of the mountain, or of the London docks, or of some place down in Spain where he knows that some banker, jeweller, or s.h.i.+p-master has valuable goods in his hands, and so soon as ever he thinks of them with his eyes, he has them before him, and n.o.body knows of it or can hinder it. In like manner by merely willing it he can also send them forthwith from the place whence he takes them, to Russia, or Calcutta, or anywhere else, and bring back the money he asks for them. Now should there be a man of this cla.s.s living here, in the neighbourhood, or even in America, and he took a fancy to rob the warehouse, you will easily understand, with your una.s.sisted reason, that then your peeled and boiled twigs would be of just as much avail, as a basin of well-made water gruel to cure an earthquake."

The stranger had wit enough to perceive that Conrad was making a fool of him; but the peasants, though there were some things that puzzled them, swallowed all these nonsensical stories. Conrad exulted in his superiority, and went on: "Look you man, if there were no conjurers of this kind, how would all the contraband goods get in, which we find in every part of the world? and this is the reason why the preventive service can do so little, however strict and vigilant they may be. The learning the art indeed must probably cost some trouble; and this no doubt is why so very few seem to reach any mastery in it."

"All that you have been telling me," answered the traveller, is mighty strange; "and perhaps the neatest way of winding up our dialogue would be, if I were to affirm that I am one of the masters in this art.

However you would immediately require some specimen of my skill; and at that indeed I might boggle a little. Nevertheless be it in earnest or in jest that you have been talking all this while, there is most unquestionably, as no rational being will dispute, a number of incomprehensible and marvellous things in the world."

Conrad, who in the mean time had been regaling himself with some strong beer, and fancied he had gained a complete victory over his unknown antagonist, was irritated by this rejoinder, and the more so because the peasants, who had heard the conversation, were not capable of undertaking the part of arbitrators.

"Heyday!" he now exclaimed; "you seem to me to be one of those people who have hardly a notion as to what is marvellous or what natural.