The Lost Manuscript Part 101

"Is there anything in the contents of the parchment leaves which would be interesting to us ladies?" she said, endeavoring to turn the conversation.

"Nothing new," replied the Scholar. "As I had the honor of telling your Highness, the same pa.s.sage was already known to us from an Italian ma.n.u.script: it is about small events in the Roman senate."

"Quarrels of the a.s.sembled fathers," interposed the Sovereign, carelessly. "They were miserable slaves. Is that all?"

"At the end, there is another anecdote of the last years of Tiberius.

The disturbed mind of the prince clung to astrology: he called astrologers to him to Capri, and caused those to be cast into the sea whom he suspected of deceit. Even the prudent Trasyllus was taken to him over the fatal rock path, and he announced the concealed secret of the Imperial life. Then the Emperor furtively asked of him whether he knew what would happen to himself that day? The philosopher inquired of the stars, and called out, trembling: 'My situation is critical; I see myself in danger of death.' At this pa.s.sage our fragment breaks off.

The incident may have been repeated--the same anecdote attaches to more than one princely life."

A couple of daws flew round the battlements of the tower, they cawed and screamed, and told one another that underneath there stood a sportsman who was seeking his game. The Sovereign suddenly arose.

"There must be an end to the screaming of these birds."

He beckoned to the forester. The man approached, and placed a weapon in his hands. The Sovereign placed the but-end on the ground and turned to the Professor, while the Princess, disquieted by the last words of the Scholar, stood aside with her suite, struggling for composure.

"The Princess has told me," began the Sovereign, "that you have some hesitation as to fulfilling a wish that we have all much at heart. I hope that the hindrances may not be insurmountable."

"It becomes me," replied the Professor, delighted by the kind words of the Sovereign, "to weigh calmly so honorable a proposal. But I have other things to take into account besides the cause of learning."

"What others?" asked the Sovereign.

"The wish of a loved wife," said the Professor. A sudden convulsion shook the limbs of the Sovereign.

"And how do you consider your relations to me?" asked the Sovereign, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

The Scholar looked at the man, from whose eyes darted a look of deadly hatred and malignity. He saw the muzzle of the weapon directed toward his breast, and the raised foot of the Sovereign feeling for the trigger. The flash of lightning impended, there was no room for flight, no time for movement; the thought of the last moment pa.s.sed through his mind. He saw before him the distorted countenance of the Emperor Tiberius, and he said, in a low voice:

"I stand on the verge of death."

"The Sovereign is sinking," called out the High Steward.

He threw himself with outstretched arms towards his master, and seized his hands. The Sovereign tottered, the weapon fell to the ground, he himself was received in the arms of those who hastened toward him. The Princess flew up to them, and looked inquiringly into the pale face of the Scholar.

"The Sovereign has been attacked by a sudden dizziness," answered the latter calmly.

"My master is losing consciousness," cried the High Steward. "How are you, Mr. Werner?"

The hands of the old man trembled. The Sovereign lay senseless in the arms of his attendants, and was carried to the castle.

The by-standers expressed with much concern their terror at the event and the Princess hastened after the stricken Sovereign. Before the High Steward followed, he said to the Professor, whilst giving him a searching look:

"It is not the first time that the Sovereign has been taken ill in such a manner. Was that a surprise to you? You did not know that the Sovereign was suffering in this way?"

"I know it to-day," replied the Scholar, coldly.

A few minutes afterwards the High Steward entered the room of the Professor, who was preparing for his journey.

"I come to beg your indulgence," began the High Steward; "for I must trouble you with an acknowledgment which is painful to me. You have talked much lately in my presence to the Sovereign of the Caesarian madness of the Roman emperors. What you then said was very instructive to me."

"I now find," replied the Professor, gloomily, "that the place was ill chosen."

"More than you a.s.sume," replied the courtier, drily. "To me it was peculiarly instructive, but not so much what you said as that you said it. I should not have thought it possible that any one would so acutely reason upon the past, and so completely give up all judgment of that which was around him. You then told a sick man the story of his own disease."

"I have just discovered that," replied the Scholar.

"The Sovereign is diseased in mind. It is now necessary that you should know it. I have a second confession to make to you. I discover that I have misjudged you."

"I shall be glad if your present opinion is more favorable to me than the former one," replied the Professor, with dignity.

"In your point of view, yes," continued the High Steward. "I have for a long time regarded you in your relations here as a cautious man, who was cleverly following out his objects. I have learnt that you are not that, but something different."

"An honorable man, your Excellency," replied the Professor.

"We have nothing to reproach one another with," rejoined the courtier, bowing; "as you misjudged the Sovereign, so did I misunderstand you; but my mistake is the greater, for I am an older man, and I have not the excuse of a specially intellectual mind, which sometimes makes it difficult for a man to judge correctly of other natures. But we have both one excuse. It is seldom easy to form a just estimate of those who have grown up in other circles, and show a different combination of virtues and weaknesses. We are all liable to be confused in our judgment, according as our self-respect is satisfied or wounded. Where genial tendencies find no response, displeasure erects a barrier; and where powerful tones echo sympathetically to one's breast, there is the danger of too rapid intimacy. Thus I have put too low a value on your honorable openness and candor. I now pay the penalty, for I have to confide to you a secret that I have no doubt you will accept with proper regard."

"I a.s.sume that your Excellency does not make this communication to me without a specific cause."

"There is a plan for keeping you in our city," interposed the High Steward.

"Proposals of this nature have been made to me since yesterday."

The High Steward continued: "It is not necessary for me to be anxious about your answer. You have learnt the meaning which is concealed under a veil of civility. Do you know why the Sovereign made you the proposal?"

"No; up to this morning I have not doubted that a certain personal feeling of kindness, and the view that I might be useful here, were the motives."

"You are mistaken," replied the High Steward. "It is not a wish to keep you here merely for pa.s.sing private interests. The real motive is, as appears to me, the freak of a diseased mind, which sees in you an opponent, and fears a sharp-sightedness that will remorselessly disclose to the world a diseased spirit. You were to be fettered here; you were to be cajoled, watched, and persecuted. You are an object of interest, of fear, and of aversion."

The Professor rose.

"What I have experienced and what you tell me compel me to leave this place instantly."

"I do not wish," said the High Steward, "that you shall depart from here with displeasure, if this can be avoided; both on your own account and for the sake of many of us."

The Professor went to the table, on which lay the parchment leaves.

"I beg your indulgence if I do not regain my composure immediately. The situation in which we are placed is like that of a distant century; it stands in fearful contrast to the cheerful security with which we are wont to consider our own lives and the souls of our contemporaries."

"Cheerful security?" asked the High Steward, sorrowfully. "In courts, at least, you must not seek this, nor under any circ.u.mstances in which the individual pa.s.ses out of private life. Cheerful security! I must ask whether we have it in this century? It would be difficult to find a time in which there is so much that is insecure; in which the old is so decayed, and the new so weak."

The Professor raised his head, astonished at the bitter complaints of the old man. The High Steward continued, indignantly:

"I hear everywhere of the hopes that one has in the nation, and I see an abundance of young student-like confidence. There is not much mature power, and I do not blame a sanguine man if he places his hopes on it; nay, I even admit that this youthful spirit is in fact the best hope that we have. But I am an old man; I cannot among these novelties find anything that commands my respect, where they affect the interests of private life. I feel the decay of vital power in the air which surrounds me. My youth belonged to a time when the best culture of the nation was to be found at Court. My own ancestors have for six centuries taken an eager part in the follies and crimes, and also in the pride, of their times; and I have grown to be a man in the conception that princes and n.o.bles were the born leaders of the nation.

I see with sorrow that they have for long, perhaps for ever, lost this lead. Much of what you lately said exactly coincides with the last decades that I have pa.s.sed through. It has been a sorrowful time; the hollow weakness in the life of the people has in a great measure deteriorated the higher cla.s.ses. But there has not been altogether a deficiency of honorable and powerful men. What time has been entirely without them? But what should be the n.o.blest blossom of the national strength is just what in this empty shallow time is most deeply diseased."

The Professor interposed:

"It is a cause for sorrow; but where, perhaps, the individual loses, the whole gains?"

"Undoubtedly not," replied the courtier; "if only the gain to the whole was certain. But I see with astonishment that the greatest concerns of the nation are carried on, on all sides, with school-boyish pettiness.