death of the count, to the collateral branch; and, therefore, nobody in Silesia was at all concerned about their affairs. This strange and unlooked-for announcement silenced all farther conversation upon the subject. The little group of talkers soon afterward broke up and dispersed, for we were approaching the end of our journey, and every body except myself seemed satisfied to dismiss the matter from their minds. What were precisely my own feelings as I walked musingly back to the bows of the boat, and leaned over the yellowing waters, it would be hard to say. Deep under the death-white shroud of a profound and settled melancholy, which seemed to have permanently swathed in its cold and colorless beauty the faultless features of the countess, my heart had detected the buried presence of an unutterable sorrow. One moment of luminous agony had revealed to me in the dark eye of the count the torture of a soul surely smitten by no earthly hand. "No," I said to myself. "Of the secret of these two souls, whatever that may be, I have at least seen enough to feel sure that it involves them both in the anguish of an irreconcilable destiny." The accident of the day now nearly closed had so long delayed the course of our little steamer, that the sunset was far spent when we passed slowly under the darkening walls of the old imperial city of Cologne. The evening was hushed and sleepy. Dreamlike we seemed to glide into the shadow of the ancient town. Above the deep and drowsy orange light that was now burning low down in the wasting west, rose, dark and calm into the airy twilight of the upper sky, the massive tower of the huge Cathedral. And high upon the summit of that tall, dark tower-high, and still, and solitary, as some old wizard on the watch, stood the giant crane, which is ever the first object to greet the eye of the traveler who enters Cologne. Lonely and aloof under the darkening sky it stood, with its long, gaunt arm stretched out, as though in wild appeal, toward the antique Dragon-stone, from whose venerable quarries had been hewn, age after age, and block by block, the vast pile on which it now stood-companionless between earth and heaven. To scale to the height of that supreme solitude had the heart of the Dragon rock been broken, and year by year his mighty limbs in massy morsels wrenched away; and now, alone under the melancholy stars, pillared upon piles of pillage, there stood the hoary robber, gazing sadly, as it seemed to me, at the wronged and ruined rock. As I lifted my eyes to that solitary image, so lifelike and so lonesome, with ever outstretched arm, and long-appealing gesture, seeming to look eternally in one direction, as though listening for an answer which will never come, I fancied that the old crane might be saying to the old rock, "Irrevocable is the Past, and sad and weary is the coming and the going of the endless years. And now, of the ancient time, are we two left alone upon the earth. Let us be reconciled to each other." BOOK I I. The Secret. Mac. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff That weighs upon the heart? Doct. Must minister to himself. Therein the patient Mac. Throw physic to the dogs. I'll none of it. Macbeth, Act V., Scene 4. C |