第54章

Thus were things situated, when in November, all the leaves daily blowing off from the woods, and leaving bare the most secret haunts of the thickets, the body of the jailer was left exposed in the forest; but not, as I and my friend had conjectured, hanged.No;he had died apparently by a more horrid death--by that of crucifixion.The tree, a remarkable one, bore upon a part of its trunk this brief but savage inscription:--"T.H., jailer at -----;Crucified July 1, 1816."

A great deal of talk went on throughout the city upon this discovery; nobody uttered one word of regret on account of the wretched jailer; on the contrary, the voice of vengeance, rising up in many a cottage, reached my ears in every direction as I walked abroad.The hatred in itself seemed horrid and unchristian, and still more so after the man's death; but, though horrid and fiendish for itself, it was much more impressive, considered as the measure and exponent of the damnable oppression which must have existed to produce it.

At first, when the absence of the jailer was a recent occurrence, and the presence of the murderers among us was, in consequence, revived to our anxious thoughts, it was an event which few alluded to without fear.But matters were changed now; the jailer had been dead for months, and this interval, during which the murderer's hand had slept, encouraged everybody to hope that the storm had passed over our city; that peace had returned to our hearths; and that henceforth weakness might sleep in safety, and innocence without anxiety.Once more we had peace within our walls, and tranquillity by our firesides.Again the child went to bed in cheerfulness, and the old man said his prayers in serenity.

Confidence was restored; peace was re-established; and once again the sanctity of human life became the rule and the principle for all human hands among us.Great was the joy; the happiness was universal.

O heavens! by what a thunderbolt were we awakened from our security! On the night of the twenty-seventh of December, half an hour, it might be, after twelve o'clock, an alarm was given that all was not right in the house of Mr.Liebenheim.Vast was the crowd which soon collected in breathless agitation.In two minutes a man who had gone round by the back of the house was heard unbarring Mr.Liebenheim's door: he was incapable of uttering a word; but his gestures, as he threw the door open and beckoned to the crowd, were quite enough.In the hall, at the further extremity, and as if arrested in the act of making for the back door, lay the bodies of old Mr.Liebenheim and one of his sisters, an aged widow; on the stair lay another sister, younger and unmarried, but upward of sixty.The hall and lower flight of stairs were floating with blood.Where, then, was Miss Liebenheim, the granddaughter? That was the universal cry; for she was beloved as generally as she was admired.Had the infernal murderers been devilish enough to break into that temple of innocent and happy life? Everyone asked the question, and everyone held his breath to listen; but for a few moments no one dared to advance; for the silence of the house was ominous.At length some one cried out that Miss Liebenheim had that day gone upon a visit to a friend, whose house was forty miles distant in the forest."Aye," replied another," she had settled to go; but I heard that something had stopped her." The suspense was now at its height, and the crowd passed from room to room, but found no traces of Miss Liebenheim.

At length they ascended the stair, and in the very first room, a small closet, or boudoir, lay Margaret, with her dress soiled hideously with blood.The first impression was that she also had been murdered; but, on a nearer approach, she appeared to be unwounded, and was manifestly alive.Life had not departed, for her breath sent a haze over a mirror, but it was suspended, and she was laboring in some kind of fit.The first act of the crowd was to carry her into the house of a friend on the opposite side of the street, by which time medical assistance had crowded to the spot.

Their attentions to Miss Liebenheim had naturally deranged the condition of things in the little room, but not before many people found time to remark that one of the murderers must have carried her with his bloody hands to the sofa on which she lay, for water had been sprinkled profusely over her face and throat, and water was even placed ready to her hand, when she might happen to recover, upon a low foot-stool by the side of the sofa.

On the following morning, Maximilian, who had been upon a hunting party in the forest, returned to the city, and immediately learned the news.I did not see him for some hours after, but he then appeared to me thoroughly agitated, for the first time I had known him to be so.In the evening another perplexing piece of intelligence transpired with regard to Miss Liebenheim, which at first afflicted every friend of that young lady.It was that she had been seized with the pains of childbirth, and delivered of a son, who, however, being born prematurely, did not live many hours.