The mouth of hell, p.19
THE MOUTH OF HELL, page 19
Just then a bell rang. Samuel did not move. The bell rang a second time, then a third. Samuel rose.
He opened a small door opposite to the one through which they had entered.
Julius caught sight of a staircase, evidently a continuation of the first, and completing undoubtedly the descent towards the Neckar.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE LION’S DEN.
ALMOST at once there entered three masked men. The first carried a torch.
Samuel bowed with deep respect, and motioned them to be seated. But the. three masked men did not advance, surprised probably at seeing Julius.
“Julius von Hermelinfeld, gentlemen,” said Samuel, as if introducing him to them; “the master of this castle, which he places at your disposal, of which it was at least his due. to do the honours. Julius, our chiefs and masters of the Supreme Council are here for the first time to inspect the safe retreat we have prepared for them.”
The three made a gesture of assent and sat down. Samuel and Julius remained standing.
“I hope, my lord, the chiefs had no trouble to find the way?” said Samuel.
“Not the least,” answered one of the three, “thanks to the plan which you had traced, and which we followed step by step.”
“If this room suited your purpose it could be used for your private meetings.”
“Very well indeed. But should we be perfectly safe against surprise?”
“You shall see. Julius, help me pull this rope.”
He pointed to a thick rope in plaited and twisted iron wire, which hung from the roof against the wall.
By holding on to the handle, Samuel and Julius drew it down a foot. Then Samuel hooked the handle into an iron cramp made fast in the stonework.
“This,” said he, “has opened twenty trap-doors in each of the two staircases; leading here. As you see, the three iron doors — shutting them off, are superfluous. At present, an army could not reach you; it would be necessary to bombard, the castle and raze it to the ground and you have four exits for escape.”. “Good!” said the chief.
“And now do you wish to see the large hall for the general meetings?”
“We are here for the purpose of examining everything.”
“Wait, then, while I close the trap doors,” said Samuel.
He detached the handle from the cramp, the iron rope went up a foot, and the dull thud of the trap doors could be indistinctly heard as they closed again.
Then, taking a torch, Samuel opened the small door through which the three chiefs had entered, and they all five descended the staircase.
After going down about twenty steps, Samuel touched a spring in the stone, revealing an opening, and the chiefs found themselves in a long straight passage, down which they followed Samuel.
They walked thus for a quarter of an hour.
At last, they came to a door.
“Here we are!” said Samuel.
He opened the door and led the three chiefs and Julius into an enormous excavation in the rock, capable of holding two hundred persons quite comfortably.
“Here,” Samuel resumed, “we are no longer beneath the castle. The adepts will arrive up the side of the mountain, and will be in ignorance of there being any communication whatever between this hall and the Castle of Eberbach. I have arranged it thus in case of need, lest, should an Otto Dormagen betray the assembly, he could not compromise either the owners of the castle, nor disturb your private meetings. And now that you have seen all, does this place meet with your approval? Are you satisfied?”
“Satisfied and grateful, Samuel Gelb. We accept this safe retreat, so skilfully, so powerfully contrived. The chiefs will henceforth be your guests. This is the second service you render to the Guild. We thank you both.”
“No,” Julius said. “I cannot share the praise which Samuel alone deserves. I should have been happy to participate in his idea, and I thank him for having made use of my castle as I would have been only too glad to do. But I was away, and the entire credit is due to him.”
“Keep your share, Julius von Hermelinfeld,” replied the chief. “Samuel Gelb would not have made use of your property had he not been certain of your soul. The Union and Germany owes much to you both, and in order that you may both be rewarded, we confer upon you the same grade as we bestowed upon Samuel. Julius von Hermelinfeld you now hold second rank in the Guild.”
“Oh! a thousand thanks,” exclaimed Julius, elated with pride.
“And now we must leave you,” said the chief.
“I will accompany you,” said Samuel. “Julius, wait here for me.”
He conducted the three to one of the principal exits, where they found their horses which they had tied to trees.
Then Samuel returned to Julius.
Julius thanked him effusively.
“Bah!” said Samuel, “as I told you before, I have dabbled a little in geology, that is all. Do not however imagine that these subterranean passages are responsible for the considerable inroads made in your father’s purse. They have not cost him much, for they already existed. The ancient possessors of the castle probably had them hollowed out in case of siege. This huge rock is honeycombed with passages and cells like a bee-hive. With reference to that let me give you a little useful advice: Never take it into your head to venture into them alone. You would be swallowed up in them like a drop of water in a sponge. To anyone not knowing the place as I do, there are traps everywhere, and you would quickly disappear down some ‘oubliette.’”
“I now understand,” said Julius, “why you were able to promise Christiane that you would come in answer to her call. You have your own rooms somewhere about here?”
“Why, egad! I live here. Would you like to see my quarters?”
“I should indeed,” said Julius.
Samuel, returning through the passage which terminated in the large hall, walked along for about five minutes, followed by Julius.
Then he stopped, opened a door on the right, ascended fifty steps or thereabouts, and came to a species of platform, divided into three parts.
One was a living room, another a stable, the third a laboratory.
In the room was a bed, and only such furniture as was indispensable.
In the stable, Samuel’s horse was eating a truss of hay.
The laboratory was strewn with retorts, phials, books and plants. This evidently was the centre of Samuel’s operations. A skeleton grinned horribly and grotesquely in one corner. Two glass masks stood on a stove.
To anyone entering this mysterious vault, immediately after admiring in some engraving the cell of Rembrandt’s “Philosopher,” the contrast between that peaceful, holy “retreat,” so softly lighted by the beams of the rising sun, and this room of gloomy subterranean night, into which a sepulchral light penetrated drearily, the contrast would have been strange indeed. He would have thought that after gazing on the light of God’s face, he saw the reflection of Satan’s firebrands.
“This is my place of abode,” said Samuel.
A feeling of uneasiness came over Julius in this laboratory of occult science.
“But,” Samuel went on, “you have been long enough without breathing the outer air, and when not used to it, a mountain over one’s head after a time produces a sense of oppression. I am going to take you back to the upper regions. Just wait a moment whilst I set my stove alight and put some plants to boil which I gathered this morning.”
Having prepared his decoction he said to Julius: “Are you ready?” and conducted him in silence up a flight of steps which joined the one they had descended.
“You see,” he resumed. “Notice well these two doors. When you wish to come and see me, slide back the panel in the library, and go down forty-four steps, which will bring you to two doors. The door on the right leads to the circular hall; that on the left to my rooms. Here is one key, I have another.”
He accompanied Julius until they arrived at the door of the library.
“Good-bye,” said Julius, breathing freely on regaining daylight and fresh air.
“Come whenever you like. You know the way.”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE PHILTRE.
SAMUEL went down into his laboratory.
The mixture he had put on the fire was boiling. He let it simmer slowly, and whilst waiting took a slice of bread and a little water and began to eat and drink.
His meal over, he took up a phial, poured the mixture into it, and put the phial in his pocket.
He looked at his watch.
It was a quarter to five.
“I have three hours to myself,” said he.
He took up a book and was soon absorbed in its pages, laying down the volume at intervals to write long notes.
The hours passed by without his tearing himself away from his work or making any movement except to turn over the leaves and jot down a few lines.
At last he laid down the book.
“Now,” said he, “I think it is time.”
He again consulted his watch.
“Half-past seven. Good.”
He rose, passed through the stable, and ascended a sloping passage, without a light, without feeling his way, and yet with as little hesitation as if he were walking in the country in broad daylight.
Then he stopped and listened.
Not hearing a sound, he pressed in a certain way on a portion of the rock which turned on its hinges, and he passed out.
He was at the back of Gretchen’s hut, on the very spot where Gretchen and Christiane had been so surprised to see him appear that very morning.
It was growing dusk. Gretchen had not yet returned with her goats.
He tried the cottage door. It was locked. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and entered.
In a cupboard was half a loaf, Gretchen’s supper. Samuel took the bread, poured on it three drops from the phial which he had brought and put it back in its place.
“As a beginning, and to accustom her to its effect, this is sufficient,” he muttered. “To-morrow I will return in time to double the dose.”
Then he went out and locked the door.
But before burying himself again in his subterranean abode, he looked round, then stood still.
Gretchen’s hut was now on his left, and on his right, dimly outlined against the evening sky, was the castle, on whose dark façade Christiane’s windows alone shone out, brilliantly lighted up.
A menacing glitter shone in his eyes.
“Yes!” cried he, “I am master of you both and have you both in my power. I shall enter into your destinies as I do into your rooms, whenever I will — at my own time. I am master of the castle and master of the rock, so I must be master of those who appear to be the life of the rock and the soul of the castle, of dark Gretchen, fierce and wild as her verdant forest, of fair Christiane, fragile and precious as her sculptured palace.
“I will! Now I myself can no longer go back. My will has become my law and your doom. It is your fault. Why has your assumed purity, defied, fought against, and gone so far, up to the present, as to defeat my would-be crime? Why has your seeming weakness dared, insulted, and I think, God curse me! struck at what I called my strength? And this has lasted for over a year. In this terrible competition entered into by your pride against mine, can I be the loser? The only one I fear in the wide world is myself. Can I abdicate, in the face of these two children, this last sentiment — my own self-esteem?
“Besides, your defeat is necessary to the struggle which, like Jacob, I wage against the Spirit of God. I must prove to myself that man is master both of good and of evil, and is able, either working with or against Providence, to make the most pure to sin, and the most strong to fall.
“Who knows? perhaps the crux of the whole matter lies in the love which I exact from you. Lovelace, proud, eccentric! lulls to sleep her whom he wishes to conquer. I shall not send you to sleep, Gretchen, I will awaken you. The Marquis de Sade, strange voluptuary! pursues the ideal of infinite spirit in the torture of limited matter. It is not your body, Christiane, but your soul that I will possess through suffering. And we shall see whether my alchemy of human will cannot produce some result.
“Come now I am I really trying to find excuses and reasons to justify my actions? Tush! I act thus, by the Lord! because I am what I am, because such is my nature and my good pleasure, ‘quia nominor leo....’ Ah! here comes Gretchen.”
By the pale light of the stars, Gretchen was, in fact, returning home, driving her goats before her, but she walked with head bent down, and seemed dreamy and absent-minded.
“She is already thinking of me,” Samuel said to himself, smiling.
Just then Christiane’s window opened, and Samuel’s keen glance distinguished Christiane herself, who stepped out on to her balcony and raised her beautiful azure eyes to the azure skies.
“And is this other one always thinking of God?” muttered Samuel, biting his lips. “Oh! before these stars rise a second time, I shall have forced her to think of me, to think of the man who in twenty-four hours will have been able to compass the removal of a town, and the ‘undoing ‘of a soul.”
He re-entered hurriedly into the rock.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
TRICHTER’S TROUBLES OF HEART AND PURSE.
THE next morning at ten o’clock, Samuel went into the Raven Inn at Heidelberg, and enquired if Trichter were in.
On receiving an answer in the affirmative from the servant of whom he had asked the question, he went up to the room of his favourite fox.
Trichter evinced great delight and immense pride at being honoured by a visit from his “senior.” In fact, in his joy, he let the enormous pipe which he was smoking, fall on to the floor.
-Since we saw him a year ago, our friend Trichter had grown unmistakably more rubicund. His face showed signs of having aimed at preserving the honourable impress of the wine he had absorbed in his memorable duel. His cheeks and his forehead resembled a red mask. As to his nose, to give a satisfactory description of it, would need no less than the great William Shakespeare himself, the colour artist of Bardolph’s fiery nose. Like Bardolph’s nose, that of Trichter emitted rays of ruby-coloured light, and at night it should have procured to its noble possessor a wonderful economy of candles.
“My ‘senior’ honours me with a visit!” cried he. “Oh! will you allow me to fetch Fresswanst?”
“What for?” said Samuel.
“That he may share this privilege with me.
“Impossible. I have to speak to you on important business.”
“All the more, reason. Fresswanst is the friend of my heart and of my drinking bouts, my most intimate companion, and I do nothing without him.”
“No! I tell you. We must be alone. Give me a pipe and let us have a talk while we smoke.”
“Take your, choice.”
And he pointed to a formidable array of pipes hanging on the wall, and arranged according to size.
Samuel took the largest he could find, filled and lighted it.
While occupied with these preliminaries, he went on chatting to Trichter.
“Come, now, tell me: since when have you become so attached to Fresswanst?”
“Since our duel,” Trichter replied. “I love him as my trophy. He is my conquest and I drag him about with me everywhere. Besides, he is really the best fellow living. He bears me no ill-will at all for having gained the day; Dormagen is the man he is aggrieved at. He has no respect for him, because he did not make him drink two drops of the ‘liqueur’ you offered him. He says that you saved my honour, and that Dormagen saved his life. He will never forgive him. For you he has tremendous admiration. He envies me, I can tell you, for being your fox. He has refused to be Dormagen’s any longer. As he cannot be yours, he has drawn as near as he can to you by becoming my shadow. We are now foxes of the bottle. We spend our days in proving our affection for each other by mock challenges as to which will drink most. That keeps us in form in case of a duel.”
“It appears to me that you were already in fairly good form,” said Samuel, puffing out a whiff of smoke.
“Oh! that was nothing. We have made astonishing progress since then. Take my word for it.”
“Your nose speaks eloquently enough. But these constant libations must make extensive inroads into your purses.”
“Alas!” Trichter woefully said; “the truth of the matter is that emptying flagons soon makes a hole in one’s pocket. During the first three months we ran ourselves into debt for the remainder of our lives. But we do not run into debt now.”
“How is that?”
“Because no one will trust us. Besides, we are now able to drink without its costing us a ‘pfennig.’”
“Ha! ha!” said Samuel incredulously.
“Does that appear to you unlikely?
Listen. In a word, this is our form of procedure: we bet. As we win every bet, then it is the lookers-on who pay the expenses. But even this noble expedient might fail after a time. Alas! we are too strong. No one dare oppose themselves to us now. They are afraid of us. Unlucky beggars that we are! We have reached the position of being admired by all. So I see looming before us the ill-omened day when there will no longer be bettors to pay for us, and then how shall we do about drinking?”
And Trichter added sadly: “I want to drink so badly, — oh, so badly!”
“You are very fond of wine, then?” said Samuel.
“It is not the wine, but the forgetfulness it brings.”
“What is it you are so desirous to forget? Your debts?”
“No, my behaviour,” rejoined Trichter with a horrible grimace. “Ah! I am a scoundrel! I have my mother in Strasburg; I should have worked to help her. Instead of which I have always been an expense to her, like a coward. After the death of my father, who should have supported her? I, of course. Well! I was base enough to say to myself that I had an uncle, one of her brothers, lieutenant in the army of Napoleon, and it is he who has supported his sister. Then my uncle was killed two years ago. So I had no further excuse and said to myself: ‘Now, villain, this is the time!’ But, unfortunately, my uncle left us a small legacy; so that, instead of sending money to my mother, I asked her for some. I postponed my good intentions. The legacy was not a large one, and it was soon swallowed up, the more so as I spent the greater part of it on drink, and soon not a penny was left. You see I am an utter scoundrel. I tell you all this that you may understand why I drink: it is to drown thought. I do not want you to think that I am a coarse drunkard, a vile sponge, a drinking machine. I am a miserable wretch.”
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