Alvira: The Heroine of Vesuvius Part 6

Or will the still more devastating and ruthless storm of religious persecution seek the sanctuary in the clouds to desecrate it, to scatter its inmates and wreck its cloisters?

A calamity as thrilling and not less antic.i.p.ated will fling a sad memory around the venerable cloisters of Martigny.

Ca.s.sier is in the group listening to the aged monk recount his adventures; with knitted eyebrows he hears him moralizing on the awful destiny of the future. He is a silent listener; the conversation is carried on by the garrulous and interested youths and the happy, virtuous old monk. A forced sobriety, or the atmosphere of virtue which he dreads, has cast a gloom over him. His thoughts are still reeking with the blasphemy of the Masonic lodges, and, though restrained by politeness from intruding his unbelief, he expresses in scowls and monosyllables his dissentient feelings.

Charles still burns with indignation at her father's irreligion and personal ill-treatment. Her flushed countenance and agitated manner were at times indexes of pa.s.sion, revenge, and self-love; for a moment the feeling is strong and irresistible, then calms again with the holier sentiments of remorse and self-condemnation.

A morning as brilliant as ever lit up the glaciers of Mt. Blank rose over the cloisters. Charles and Henry accompany their father on a stroll through the mountain. They miss their kind Mentor, who is on a retreat for some days. Henry, commencing to love solitude, strays from her father and Charles to gather ferns and wild flowers creeping from the crevices of the rocks, or rising with exquisite beauty from a layer of snow. They are emblems of her own innocence and fragrant as her virtue, growing in the wilderness and shedding their charms on rocks and snow-peaks, instead of ornamenting gardens of culture and beauty. Poor Aloysia would be more at home in some arbor of innocence where angels love to tarry, and where the voice and gaze of the worldly-minded have never fallen.

Ca.s.sier and Charles had slowly climbed to a projecting rock where nature had made a large table covered with gra.s.s. On one side the ascent was easy, but the other overhung a frightful precipice. They had entered into an animated conversation; Aloysia, down beneath, could hear the sharp, quick answers of Charles, but, as such was usual in the temper of Charles, she did not notice it.

But lo! another moment, and a wild, shrill scream bade her look up; her father was no longer on the ledge of rock, and Charles flung her arms towards heaven and fell in a swoon on the edge of the precipice.

Chapter XVI.

A Funeral in the Snow.

When Charles had recovered her consciousness, she found herself reclining on the lap of Henry, who had been bathing her face with snow and tears. A long, painful call of her name had reached the inmost recess of her being whither consciousness had repaired. Springing to her feet, startled as if from a frightful dream, she gazed around.

Memory and sight returned; folding her face in her hands, she cried in a paroxysm of grief: "My G.o.d! what have I done?"

This was the only intimation she ever gave Aloysia that in the heat of pa.s.sion she had pushed her father over the precipice; she was his murderer. In their conversation the old man, more, perhaps, through impiety than conviction, misrepresented the good monks. We will not reproduce the stereotyped calumnies that even nowadays unbelievers love to heap upon the religious communities of the Catholic Church. The madness of pa.s.sion took control in the breast of Charles. Scarcely knowing what she did, she pushed her aged father towards the precipice; he slipped, fell over into the chasm, and pa.s.sed into eternity with blasphemy on his guilty lips.

The two sisters wept together for hours. Innocence, guilt, and retribution blended together in a scene of awful tragedy amid the glaciers of Mt. Blanc.

Seldom in the deeds of brigandage, in crimes committed in dark caves and lonely mountain paths, was there perpetrated a fouler murder; seldom in the sensational records of human depravity do we find the desperado of parricidal guilt under the delicate frame of girlhood.

Yet was she rather an instrument in the hands of avenging Heaven than a monster of moral iniquity. At that moment the cup of iniquity was full for the wretch who had long tested the mercy of G.o.d. That Providence which blinded the Jews in judgement for ingrat.i.tude, and made them the instruments for the fulfilment of eternal decrees of redemption, withdrew from Alvira the protection that made her, whilst she accepted the guilt, the instrument of judgment.

Rising to her feet with a sense of her desperate condition, making a few hurried explanations how her father slipped and lost his balance, she approached tremblingly the fatal edge. Leaning over, she saw the corpse of her father lying in a pool of blood in the deep chasm below.

The scene of that sad moment was indelibly impressed on her memory, and in after-hours of remorse haunted her with its horrors.

With nerve and courage, called forth by the awful circ.u.mstances of the moment, they descended the mountain to the foot of the ravine where the body lay in the snow.

The descent was steep and treacherous, and guilty conscience made Charles tremble lest at any moment she would lose footing and be precipitated down the dark and gaping chasms formed by glaciers and rocks. After hours of toil, and with imminent peril, they found the body of Ca.s.sier. A dark pallor had clouded his features, a ghastly stare, closed teeth, and clenched hand bespoke the last sentiment of human pa.s.sion. Alvira trembled and stood powerless for a few moments. Still, necessity nerved her to action. She removed the money and valuables from the body of her father, and, in the midst of wailings that echoed mournfully through the lonely mountain, they made a grave in the snow. Wrapping him in his cloak, they laid him in a bank of soft crystals through which the blood had trickled in crimson streams.

Thrilling and sad for Aloysia and Alvira the last moments of this funeral ceremony. Gently they placed the cold snow on the remains of their father. The wild eagle swooped around in anger, and the wind swept with ominous sighs through deep ravines of the rugged mountain.

The gigantic cliff over which Ca.s.sier had been hurled by his maddened child frowned over them in awful majesty. It would be in centuries to come the cenotaph of a dishonored tomb. The winter would come again with fresh snow to cover this valley of death; the sun would pour its cold rays on the frozen mound that marked the grave of Ca.s.sier. No tear of affection would moisten the icy shroud, but, in sympathy for the hapless child stained with his blood, whose crime was condoned in the provocation caused, the world has cast its abhorrent curse on the grave of the reprobate.

"There let every noxious thing Trail its filth and fix its sting; In his ears and eyeb.a.l.l.s tingling, With his blood their poison mingling, Till beneath the solar fires.

Rankling all, the curse expires."

Chapter XVII.

An Unwritten Page.

The noise of life can ne'er so dull our ear, Nor pa.s.sion's waves, though in their wildest mood, That oft above their surge we should not hear The solemn voices of the great and good.

As oft in icicles a flower remaineth Unwithered until spring its buds unchain, The young heart through lifes change a good retaineth, And will exhume its summer leaves again.

When Charles and Henry had breathed their last sigh over the snowy mound that covered the earthly remains of the hapless Ca.s.sier, they continued their descent down the mountain. They dared not go back to the cloister; they fled when no one pursued, for outraged conscience is its own avenger. Each stir in the brushwood, a loosened stone rolling quickly by, or the fluttering and scream of startled birds of the solitude, made them tremble.

Night was fast coming on; the sharp peaks of the Tete Noir were dimmed with clouds, and frowned with ominous terror on the path of the terrified fugitives. Through dangers of every kind, with bruises and wounds all over their delicate frames, they reached in the night the beautiful village of Chamounix. Refreshed with sleep and food, they prepared themselves for their future course, which for a while will be perilous, sensational, and extraordinary.

Free from the control of an intemperate and tyrannical father, possessing immense wealth, they cast themselves into a whirlpool of deceitful pleasure, and for a while, in yielding to the longings of misguided youth, hushed the qualms of conscience, which can only rest in the bosom of virtue.

Once more free, the thought naturally came of returning to the dress that became their s.e.x. Aloysia, whose sense of delicacy was still as tender as the sensitive plant yielding to human touch, pleaded in tears for a return to the simple ways of girlhood, to the life and society more congenial to their habits and more in keeping with the laws of G.o.d and nature. Alvira had yielded for a moment. But the love of travel, which in those days could not be gratified in their true condition of young and handsome girls without guardians, whilst in their male disguise not a shadow of suspicion or impropriety would interfere with them; the novelty of their condition, a.s.suming each day some new attractions; the curiosity innate in the feminine breast to hear and see things outside her own circle; above all the hallucinations flung on the path of disguise by the fiend of evil, who thus intrigued for the final ruin of his unsuspecting victims, made them agree mutually to pa.s.s a short time in travelling around as naval cadets; then, tired and surfeited with their triumph over nature, they hoped to retire into the sphere of utility destined for them by Providence.

But, to our own and to our readers' regret, we must pause in our biography. The sources from which we cull these interesting details have cast historic silence over our heroines' ramblings of three years.

What a volume of sensation they suggest! Were we given to the doubtful utility of fictional biography, were we weak enough to enrich ourselves by pandering to the morbid and often depraved longings of modern literary taste, we might fill a couple of volumes with scenes of excitement, of "hair-breadth 'scapes," and with heart-palpitating suspenses of misplaced love. We could not draw a picture more interesting or strange than those two sweet maidens in their disguise.

We see them in the salons of the wealthy, in the clubs of the politicians, and at the billiard-tables of giddy youth who little dream of the intrusion, which, if they understood, would make them more happy.

We fancy we see those youths, so polished, so gay, and withal so handsome, the idols of the society they move in; we hear compliments about those delicate hands, those small feet, those charming eyes.

Our sympathy would chronicle the end fate of many an unsuspecting maiden who loved and pined in the dream of secret love towards the young officers that had crossed their path, whilst they revelled in cruel delight in their triumph over their own frail, tender-hearted s.e.x. Our tale might unravel the plottings of hopeful mothers who vainly plied the utmost worldly ingenuity to gain for their daughters already pa.s.sed the meridian of youth such promising and charming husbands. What skill it would demand to describe the chagrin of those old and young ladies, if they discovered the fraud which so heartlessly trifled with the sacred feeling of love!

We will not tarry over imaginary incidents whilst terrible and thrilling scenes are before us. The record of those extraordinary maidens is only now commending in all its romantic attraction. It is not the vicissitudes of an erring life that inspire our pen in this brief sketch, but the merciful designs of Providence in following and wresting from perdition a n.o.ble soul, endeared to heaven by the prayers of a repentant mother, by the sighs of a saintly religious, and by its own love for the immaculate Queen of Heaven.

Alvira opens her soul to the impulses of grace, but in dangerous and guilty procrastination she pa.s.ses through some startling vicissitudes before the Almighty, impatient as it were for her love, draws her to him by one of the most touching miracles recorded in the wonders of hagiology. We will hurry on to those events, which will warm our hearts with love towards G.o.d, and make us look up with a deep feeling of awe towards that "mercy which is above all his works."

Three years of strange vicissitude rolled over the career of our heroines. Some thousands of pounds gilded the path they pa.s.sed over.

With all the recklessness of youth, they squandered their ill-gotten money. Many a poor ruined family eked out a miserable existence, whilst their gold, entrusted to the wretched banker who had gone to his account, was flung recklessly on the tables of chance by the children he had nursed in the school of iniquity. Like sand pa.s.sing through the fingers, like corn through perforated sack, their thousands dwindled away, giving place to the bitter hour of retaliation, of punishment, which will yet come for those hapless children of folly.

It did not please Almighty G.o.d to hurry them to a dreadful judgement by sudden or awful death. He has other and even keener pangs than those of death, but they come rather from the hand of mercy than of justice. They are the pangs of remorse, which tear the heart of their victims with agonizing stings that are known only in the deep secrets of the soul. A dark and secret hour of retribution is at hand for Charles; the heavy but merciful hand of G.o.d will touch her, although she will still follow the mad career of her hypocrisy and the wild dreams of her ambition.

Alvira, still in her disguise of Charles, endeavored to forget the crimes she committed in the dissipation in which she indulged. Whilst wealth and friends were around she feigned a gay heart and flattered herself she was not so bad. She involuntarily blushed at rude remarks made by gentlemen amongst whom she pa.s.sed as a companion, and in the unsullied innocence of her sister she found a guardian for herself.

They invariably shunned low society, and thus they won the esteem of all; they pa.s.sed as young men of virtue as well as of beauty and of grace. The immorality that dishonored the manhood around them, the indecency of the conversations they heard, and the open and blasphemous impiety that often thrilled their dove-like hearts, made them form a pleasing contrast with themselves and the corrupted society they had now known to the core; yet, "Say not I have sinned, and what evil hath befallen me." Who can flee from the eye of G.o.d? There's a sting in the conviction of guilt that will follow its victim through the ballroom, the mountain cave, or the cloister, to the very side of the bed of death.

It was when Charles and Henry found their money nearly gone, and the prospect of poverty before them, they felt in all its painful antic.i.p.ations the prospect of a gloomy and unknown future. There is no pang, perhaps, in nature so keen as that which pierces the rich and ambitious when certain poverty stares them in the face; perhaps 'tis shame, perhaps 'tis pride, perhaps 'tis the despair that arises from the shock of blasted hopes--or all together--that weight on the sinking heart, and make each vital throb like the last heavy thud of death. Then suicide has a charm and self-destruction a temptation.

Many a turbulent wave has closed the career of a the beggared spendthrift and the thwarted man of ambition.

Charles commenced now to suffer in antic.i.p.ation all the pangs of coming shame, poverty, and humiliation. With remorse returned the virtuous impressions of childhood, instilled into her tender mind by her penitent mother. She longed to return to the circle nature had destined for her, but which seemed more difficult now than to commence a new disguise. Although she yielded in all virtuous impulses to that "procrastination which is the thief of time," yet in her after-career there was a wonderful combination of events, extraordinary and interesting, which prove a loving and forgiving Providence hearing the prayer of a penitent mother. But we must raise the curtain and proceed with the drama of sacred romance whose first cats have given so much interest and sympathy.

Chapter XVIII.

In Uniform.

It was a bright morning in November, in the year 1684. The people of Milan were all flocking to the cathedral. It was the feast of the great St. Charles. The magnificent Duomo which now covers the shrine of this great saint was not in existence then; nevertheless, the devotion of the people towards their apostle and patron was deep and sincere. Perhaps in no city in Italy is there greater pomp thrown around the patron's festival than at Milan. From morning to night thousands gather around that venerated shrine. The prince with his liveried servants, and the poor peasant with the snow-white handkerchief tied on her head, kneel there side by side. From the first anniversary of the great saint's death to the present day the musical services of the great cathedral have been rendered by the greatest talent in Italy, Professionals and amateurs flocked from every side to do honor to the man who did so much honor to the city of Milan. Nowadays, since science has shortened distance, it is one of the autumnal amus.e.m.e.nts of the wealthy Englishman to be present at the Feast of St. Charles at Milan. The gorgeous Duomo, hewn, as it were, out of Carrara marble, covered with five thousand statues and pinnacles, illumined with hundreds of thousands of lights swinging in the lofty aisles in chandeliers of sparkling crystal; the majestic organs, accompanied in musical harmony by hundreds of the best of human voices, rolling in soul-stirring majesty over the heads of tens of thousands of the kneeling children of the saint--all leave an impression never to be forgotten. Although in modern days the city of Milan has nurtured in her bosom some of the firebrands of Italian revolution, yet the city honored with the names and relics of Ambrose, Augustine, and Charles has yet thousands of pious and holy souls, who still gather with filial devotion around the tombs of the sainted dead.

On the morning of the festival of St. Charles our heroine awoke with a heavy heart. She knew the city was astir and repairing to the cathedral. How strange she should have chosen the name of Charles!