CHAPTER LV

THE door of the church was open, and Consuelo stopped upon the threshold to observe the inspired virtuoso and the strange sanctuary. This so-called church was nothing but an immense grotto, hewn, or rather cleft out of the rock irregularly by the hand of nature, and hollowed out by the subterranean force of the water. Scattered torches, placed on gigantic blocks, shed a fantastic light on the green sides of the cavern, and partially revealed dark recesses, in the depths of which the huge forms of tall stalactites loomed like specters alternately seeking and shunning the light. The enormous sedimentary deposits on the sides of the cavern assumed a thousand fantastic forms. Sometimes they seemed devouring serpents, rolling over and interlacing each other. Sometimes hanging from the roof and shooting upward from the floor, they wore the aspect of the collossal teeth of some monster, of which the dark cave beyond might pass for the gaping jaws. Elsewhere they might have been taken for mis-shapen statues, giant images of the demi gods of antiquity. A vegetation appropriate to the grotto—huge lichens, rough as dragon's scales; festoons of heavy-leaved scolopendra, tufts of young cypresses recently planted in the middle of the inclosure on little heaps of artificial soil, not unlike graves—gave the place a terrific and somber aspect which deeply impressed Consuelo. To her first feeling of terror, admiration however quickly succeeded. She approached and saw Albert standing on the margin of the fountain which sprung up in the midst of the cavern. This water, although gushing up abundantly, was inclosed in so deep a basin that no movement was visible on its surface. It was calm and motionless as a block of dark sapphire, and the beautiful aquatic plants with which Albert and Zdenko had clothed its margin, were not agitated by the slightest motion. The spring was warm at its source, and the tepid exhalations with which it filled the cavern caused a mild and moist atmosphere favorable to vegetation. It gushed from its fountain in many ramifications, of which some lost themselves under the rocks with a dull noise, while others ran gently into limpid streams in the interior of the grotto and disappeared in the depths beyond.

When Count Albert, who until then had been only trying the strings of his violin, saw Consuelo advance toward him, he came forward to meet her, and assisted her to cross the channels, over which he had thrown, in the deepest spots, some trunks of trees, while in other places rocks, on a level with the water, offered an easy passage to those habituated to it. He offered his hand to assist her, and sometimes lifted her in his arms. But this time Consuelo was afraid, not of the torrent which flowed silently and darkly under her feet, but of the mysterious guide toward whom she was drawn by an irresistible sympathy, while an indefinable repulsion at the same time held her back. Having reached the bank she beheld a spectacle not much calculated to reassure her. It was a sort of quadrangular monument, formed of bones and human skulls, arranged as if in a catacomb.

"Do not be uneasy," said Albert, who felt her shudder. "These are the honored remains of the martyrs of my religion; and they form the altar before which I love to meditate and pray."

"What is your religion then, Albert?" said Consuelo, in a sweet and melancholy voice. "Are these bones Hussite or Catholic? Were not both the victims of impious fury, and martyrs of a faith equally sincere? Is it true that you prefer the Hussite doctrines to those of your relatives, and that the reforms subsequent to those of John Huss do not appear to you sufficiently radical and decisive? Speak, Albert—what am I to believe?"

"If they told you that I preferred the reform of the Hussites to that of the Lutherans, and the great Procopius to the vindictive Calvin, as much as I prefer the exploits of the Taborites to those of the soldiers of Wallenstein, they have told you the truth, Consuelo. But what signifies my creed to you, who seem instinctively aware of truth, and who know the Deity better than I do? God forbid that I should bring you here to trouble your poor soul and peaceful conscience with my tormenting reveries! Remain as you are, Consuelo; you were born pious and good; moreover, you were born poor and obscure, and nothing has changed in you the pure dictates of reason and the light of justice. We can pray together without disputing—you who know every thing although having learned nothing, and I who know very little after a long and tedious study. In whatever temple you raise your voice, the knowledge of the true God will be in your heart, and the feeling of the true faith will kindle your soul. It is not to instruct you, but in order that your revelation may be imparted to me, that I wished our voices and our spirits to unite before this altar, formed of the bones of my fathers."

"I was not mistaken, then, in thinking that these honored remains, as you call them, are those of Hussites, thrown into the fountain of the Schreckenstein during the bloody fury of the civil wars, in the time of your ancestor John Ziska, who, they say, made fearful reprisals? I have been told that, after burning the village, he destroyed the wells. I fancy I can discover in the obscurity of this vault, a circle of hewed stones above my head, which tells me that we are precisely under a spot where I have often sat when fatigued after searching for you in vain. Say, Count Albert, is this really the place that you have baptized as the Stone of Expiation?"

"Yes, it is here," replied Albert, "that torments and atrocious violence have consecrated the asylum of my prayers, and the sanctuary of my grief. You see enormous blocks suspended above our heads, and others scattered on the banks of the stream. The just hands of the Taborites flung them there by the orders of him whom they called the Terrible Blind Man; but they only served to force back the waters toward those subterranean beds in which they succeeded in forcing a passage. The wells were destroyed, and I have covered their ruins with cypress, but it would have needed a mountain to fill this cavern. The blocks which were heaped up in the mouth of the well, were stopped by a winding stair, similar to that which you had the courage to descend in my garden at the castle. Since that time, the gradual pressure of the soil has thrust them closer together, and confines them better. If any portion of the mass escapes, it is during the winter frosts; you have therefore nothing to fear from their fall."

"It was not that of which I was thinking, Albert," replied Consuelo, looking toward the gloomy altar on which he had placed his Stradivarius. "I asked myself why you render exclusive worship to the memory of these victims, as if there were no martyrs on the other side, and as if the crimes of the one were more pardonable than those of the other?"

Consuelo spoke thus in a severe tone, and looking distrustfully at Albert. She remembered Zdenko, and all her questions, had she dared so to utter them, assumed in her mind a tone of interrogation, such as would befit a judge toward a criminal.

The painful emotion which suddenly seized upon the count seemed the confession of remorse. He passed his hands over his forehead, then pressed them against his breast, as if it were being torn asunder. His countenance changed in a frightful manner, and Consuelo feared that he might have only too well understood her.

"You do not know what harm you do me," said he, leaning upon the heap of bones, and drooping his head toward the withered skulls, which seemed to gaze on him from their hollow orbits. "No, you cannot know it, Consuelo, and your cold remarks recall the memory of the dreary past. You do not know that you speak to a man who has lived through ages of grief, and who, after being the blind instrument of inflexible justice in the hands of God, has received his recompense and undergone his punishment. I have so suffered, so wept, so expiated my dreary destiny, so atoned for the horrors to which my fate subjected me, that I had at last flattered myself I could forget them. Forgetfulness!—yes, forgetfulness!—that was the craving which consumed my aching breast; that was my vow and my daily prayer; that was the token of my alliance with man and my reconciliation with God, which, during long years, I had implored, prostrate upon these moldering bones. When I first saw you, Consuelo, I began to hope; when you pitied me, I thought I was saved. See this wreath of withered flowers ready to fall into the dust, and which encircles the skull that surmounts the altar. You do not recognize it, though I have watered it with many a bitter yet soothing tear. It was you who gathered them, you who sent them to me by the companion of my sorrows, the faithful guardian of this sepulcher. Covering them with kisses and tears, I anxiously asked myself if you could ever feel any true and heartfelt regard for one like myself—a pitiless fanatic, an unfeeling tyrant——"

"But what are the crimes you have committed?" said Consuelo firmly, distracted with a thousand varying emotions, and emboldened by the deep dejection of Albert. "If you have a confession to make, make it here to me, that I may know if I can absolve and love you."

"Yes, you may absolve me; for he whom you know, Albert of Rudolstadt, has been innocent as a child; but he whom you do not know, John Ziska of the Chalice, has been whirled by the wrath of Heaven into a career of iniquity."

Consuelo saw the imprudence of which she had been guilty, in rousing the slumbering flame and recalling to Albert's mind his former madness. This, however, was not the moment to combat it, and she was revolving in her mind some expedient to calm him, and had gradually sunk into a reverie, when suddenly she perceived that Albert no longer spoke, no longer held her hand—that he was not at her side, but standing a few paces off, before the monument, performing on his violin the singular airs with which she had been already so surprised and charmed.