第55章

Scandal, however, was not allowed long to batten upon this imaginary triumph, for within two hours after the circulation of this first rumor, followed a second, authenticated, announcing that Maximilian had appeared with the confessor of the Liebenheim family, at the residence of the chief magistrate, and there produced satisfactory proofs of his marriage with Miss Liebenheim, which had been duly celebrated, though with great secrecy, nearly eight months before.In our city, as in all the cities of our country, clandestine marriages, witnessed, perhaps, by two friends only of the parties, besides the officiating priest, are exceedingly common.In the mere fact, therefore, taken separately, there was nothing to surprise us, but, taken in connection with the general position of the parties, it DID surprise us all; nor could we conjecture the reason for a step apparently so needless.For, that Maximilian could have thought it any point of prudence or necessity to secure the hand of Margaret Liebenheim by a private marriage, against the final opposition of her grandfather, nobody who knew the parties, who knew the perfect love which possessed Miss Liebenbeim, the growing imbecility of her grandfather, or the utter contempt with which Maximilian regarded him, could for a moment believe.Altogether, the matter was one of profound mystery.

Meantime, it rejoiced me that poor Margaret's name had been thus rescued from the fangs of the scandalmongers.These harpies had their prey torn from them at the very moment when they were sitting down to the unhallowed banquet.For this I rejoiced, but else there was little subject for rejoicing in anything which concerned poor Margaret.Long she lay in deep insensibility, taking no notice of anything, rarely opening her eyes, and apparently unconscious of the revolutions, as they succeeded, of morning or evening, light or darkness, yesterday or to-day.Great was the agitation which convulsed the heart of Maximilian during this period; he walked up and down in the cathedral nearly all day long, and the ravages which anxiety was working in his physical system might be read in his face.People felt it an intrusion upon the sanctity of his grief to look at him too narrowly, and the whole town sympathized with his situation.

At length a change took place in Margaret, but one which the medical men announced to Maximilian as boding ill for her recovery.

The wanderings of her mind did not depart, but they altered their character.She became more agitated; she would start up suddenly, and strain her eye-sight after some figure which she seemed to see;then she would apostrophize some person in the most piteous terms, beseeching him, with streaming eyes, to spare her old grandfather.

"Look, look," she would cry out, "look at his gray hairs! O, sir!

he is but a child; he does not know what he says; and he will soon be out of the way and in his grave; and very soon, sir, he will give you no more trouble." Then, again, she would mutter indistinctly for hours together; sometimes she would cry out frantically, and say things which terrified the bystanders, and which the physicians would solemnly caution them how they repeated;then she would weep, and invoke Maximilian to come and aid her.

But seldom, indeed, did that name pass her lips that she did not again begin to strain her eyeballs, and start up in bed to watch some phantom of her poor, fevered heart, as if it seemed vanishing into some mighty distance.

After nearly seven weeks passed in this agitating state, suddenly, on one morning, the earliest and the loveliest of dawning spring, a change was announced to us all as having taken place in Margaret;but it was a change, alas! that ushered in the last great change of all.The conflict, which had for so long a period raged within her, and overthrown her reason, was at an end; the strife was over, and nature was settling into an everlasting rest.In the course of the night she had recovered her senses.When the morning light penetrated through her curtain, she recognized her attendants, made inquiries as to the month and the day of the month, and then, sensible that she could not outlive the day, she requested that her confessor might be summoned.

About an hour and a half the confessor remained alone with her.At the end of that time he came out, and hastily summoned the attendants, for Margaret, he said, was sinking into a fainting fit.

The confessor himself might have passed through many a fit, so much was he changed by the results of this interview.I crossed him coming out of the house.I spoke to him--I called to him; but he heard me not--he saw me not.He saw nobody.Onward he strode to the cathedral, where Maximilian was sure to be found, pacing about upon the graves.Him he seized by the arm, whispered something into his ear, and then both retired into one of the many sequestered chapels in which lights are continually burning.There they had some conversation, but not very long, for within five minutes Maximilian strode away to the house in which his young wife was dying.One step seemed to carry him upstairs.The attendants, according to the directions they had received from the physicians, mustered at the head of the stairs to oppose him.But that was idle: before the rights which he held as a lover and a husband--before the still more sacred rights of grief, which he carried in his countenance, all opposition fled like a dream.There was, besides, a fury in his eye.A motion of his hand waved them off like summer flies; he entered the room, and once again, for the last time, he was in company with his beloved.