Adelheid

“ Adelheid returned his evident solicitude by a smile of love, but its painful expression was so unequivocal as to heighten the baron's fears.
"Art not well, love? It cannot be that we have been deceived--that some peasant's daughter is thought worthy to supplant thee? Ha!--Signor Grimaldi, this matter begins, in sooth, to seem offensive;--but, old as I am--Well, we shall never know the truth, unless thou speakest frankly--this is a rare business, after all, Gaetano--that a daughter of mine should be repulsed by a hind!" ”

“ Throwing aside all pleasantry, I trust, Adelheid, that we are to have no girlish trifling with a youth like Sigismund; to whom we owe so much, even to our lives, and in whose behalf we should be ready to sacrifice every feeling of prejudice, or habit--all that we possess, ay, even to our pride. ”

“ Thou hast always been known, and courted, and happy! Thou canst not know how dear it is to the despised to seem even to be preferred!"
"Nay, say not this, I pray thee!" answered Adelheid, hurriedly, and with a throb of anguish at her heart; "there is little in this life that speaks fairly for itself. We are not always what we seem; and if we were, and far more miserable than anything but vice can make us, there is another state of being, in which justice--pure, unalloyed justice--will be done." ”

“ The cultivated taste of Adelheid, in particular, was quick in detecting those beauties of a more subtle kind which the less instructed are apt to overlook, and she found additional pleasure in pointing them out to the ingenuous and wondering Christine, who received these, her first, lessons in that grand communion with nature which is pregnant with so much unalloyed delight, with gratitude and a readiness of comprehension, that amply repaid her instructress. ”

“ Adelheid plighted her unvarying love and fidelity with maiden modesty, but with the steadiness of a woman whose affections and principles were superior to the little weaknesses which, on such occasions, are most apt to unsettle those who have the least of either of these great distinctive essentials of the sex. The vows to cherish and protect were uttered by Sigismund in deep manly sincerity, for, at that moment, he felt as if a life of devotion to her happiness would scarcely requite her single-minded, feminine, and unvarying truth. ”

“ Then he pushed his hair from his forehead and said, calmly:
“Try if you can understand me, Adelheid. When a woman marries and becomes a mother, she usually becomes quiet ... quieter, I mean. I mean that there are victories which she cannot win, triumphs which she cannot achieve ... which she does not trouble about. She does not trouble about them, Adelheid, because she has deepened her life ... because she has come so near to one man that the approach of other men is distasteful to her. ”

“ At this moment old Francis crossed the room. "Here's the man who always can give the best advice, and can procure everything, even things before unheard of and unseen." With these words the Lady Adelheid called him to her, and as she endeavoured to make him comprehend what it was that was wanted, the Baroness listened with her hands clasped and her head bent forward, looking upon the old man's face with a gentle smile. ”

“ The tenth century seems to have been an age of illustrious women. No sooner do we leave the story of Adelheid than we enter upon that of the young wife of Otho II., the Empress Theophano, daughter of the Greek Emperor, Romanus II. When little more than a child she was married to the son of Adelheid, he himself being in his twentieth year in the year 972, and in the city of Rome. ”

“ Adelheid's first marriage was very different from her second one. Her poor father gave her away, although he was so ill, and she in her train and lace and diamonds looked like a queen; but her face was pale and cold. Now, she seemed like a different creature as she turned with Hartmut from the altar in her simple white silk gown and gauzy veil. I have never seen so peaceful, so happy a face! Poor Herbert! He never possessed his wife's love."
"Who could love so old a man? ”

“ I will not tell thee the anguish I felt, Adelheid, when the truth was at length revealed! Of all the cruelties inflicted by society, there is none so unrighteous in its nature as the stigma it entails in the succession of crime or misfortune: of all its favors, none can find so little justification, in right and reason, as the privileges accorded to the accident of descent." "And yet we are much accustomed to honor those that come of an ancient line, and to see some part of the glory of the ancestor even in the most remote descendant." ”

“ Then he turned his face towards her:
“He does not live in his first eager longing for the trysting-hour, but confidently seeks his accustomed couch by her side. Custom has gently bound the two people into one family. Is that not beautiful, Adelheid? And good?”
[89] “Yes,” she said. “It is beautiful, as you tell it. But it is not youth.”
“Then what is youth, Adelheid?”
“Youth is not rest.”
“Then one should not marry before one is old,” said Cordt. “For marriage is rest. Deep, powerful, happy ... generating rest.”
“No more one should,” replied Fru Adelheid. ”

“ Well, strong love endureth much. Hath the baron often spoken to thee of old Grimaldi--young Grimaldi, I should say--and of the many freaks of our thoughtless days?"
"So much, Signore," returned Adelheid, who had wept and smiled by turns during the interrupted dialogue of her father and his friend, "that I can repeat most of your youthful histories. The castle of Willading is deep among the mountains, and it is rare indeed for the foot of stranger to enter its gates. ”

“ I made a passing allusion to your marriage, Ada—that it had surprised me a little, more especially as I had known your husband so well, and had not imagined you were so ambitious. Whereupon Eugen turned on me and defended you in the warmest manner. Said you had been sacrificed for him, and left me quite bewildered by his passionate words and insinuations."
"You should not have paid any attention to him," said Adelheid, with noticeable uneasiness. "Such a young hothead sees the tragical side of everything. ”

“ The way is weary, and it has need of all the solace that affection and a community of feeling can yield to lighten its cares. I have never liked this heartless manner of trafficking in the tenderest ties, to uphold a failing line or a failing fortune; and better it were that Adelheid should pass her days unwooed in thy ancient castle, than give her hand, under any sudden impulse of sentiment, not less than under a cold calculation of interest. Such a girl, my friend, is not to be bestowed without much care and reflection. ”

“ Creatures stern as soldiers cannot bend their fancies like pliant twigs, or with the facility of female--"
"Duty," said Adelheid gravely, observing that he hesitated.
"If thou wilt, duty. The word has great weight with thy sex, and I do not question that it should have with mine."
"Thou canst not be wanting in affection for thy father, Sigismund. The manner in which thou interposedst to save his life, when we were in that fearful jeopardy of the tempest, disproves thy words." ”

“ These were the beauties on which Adelheid most loved to dwell, for they are always the charms that soonest strike the true admirer of nature, when he finds himself raised above the lower and less purified strata of the atmosphere, into the regions of more radiant light and brightness. It is thus that the physical, no less than the moral, vision becomes elevated above the impurities that cling to this nether world, attaining a portion of that spotless and sublime perception as we ascend, by which we are nearly assimilated to the truths of creation ”

“ You need not fear Falkenried's fate; your wife has good blood in her veins. I knew Herr Stahlberg well; he worked earnestly and with capability, too, or he would never have succeeded as he did in life. And he was ever an honest man, even after he became a millionaire, and Adelheid is her father's daughter, bone and sinew. You have chosen well for yourself, and I rejoice with you from the bottom of my heart."
The little hunting castle of Rodeck which belonged to the princely house of Adelsberg, lay but a few miles distant from "Fürstenstein," in the midst of the deep forest. ”

“ My great uncle took pity on me.
"Now," continued he, "I wish you to know that the pretended illness of the baroness was nothing but a dream. Adelheid becomes distracted when there is a thunder-storm, and the old aunts, attracted by the noise, are fatiguing poor Seraphine with their care and their elixirs. It is nothing but a fainting fit, a nervous crisis, attributed by the baron to the effects of music. ”

“ It centres round Adelheid, the young and beautiful widow of Lothair, a Lombard king. Taken prisoner by his successor, the tyrant Berengarius, she is immured in a castle on the Lago di Garda, and threatened with a forced marriage with the son of her oppressor. This threat seems to endow her with superhuman power. Bidding defiance to all difficulty and danger, she contrives gradually to dig a secret way through the soft earth, and suddenly finds herself free. Dawn is just breaking. ”

“ She was the young Queen Adelheid, the widow of King Lothar, who had recently died, and she was then suffering a series of harsh persecutions from the present king, Berengar II, who in this way was endeavoring to force her to marry his son Adalbert. She hated this young man, and positively refused to have anything to do with him. ”

“ In time, your beard [60] will grow fast to the table and you will never speak a word, except once every ten years, and then it will be so wise and deep that no one will understand it.”
“There is no danger of that, Adelheid,” he said.
“But I don’t want to be Queen Thyre or Signe or any of them,” she said; and her voice was so hard that something gave a wrench inside him. “I want to be the woman I am, the woman you fell in love with and took in your arms. ”

“ Every precaution was used to protect the females that tenderness could suggest; but though Adelheid, who alone retained sufficient self-command to give an account of her feelings, diminished the danger of their situation with the wish not to alarm their companions uselessly, she could not conceal from herself the horrible truth that the vital heat was escaping from her own body, with a rapidity that rendered it impossible for her much longer to retain the use of her faculties. ”

“ It was Adelheid who had spoken. Her hair had fallen in wild profusion over her shoulders, as she still knelt over the articles on the pavement, and her hands were clasped entreatingly, as if she deprecated the rude interruptions which had so often dashed the cup from their lips, as they were about to yield to the delight of believing Sigismund to be the child of the Prince of Genoa.
"Thou art another of a fond and weak sex, to swell the list of confiding spirits that have been betrayed by the selfishness and falsehood of men," answered the mocking mariner. "Go to, girl!--make thyself a nun ”

“ Then he said:
“Finn can build himself a new house, if he likes. Or he can refurnish his ancestral halls. And put in plate-glass windows and wide staircases and anything that suits him and his period. But he must know and be thankful that the walls are strong and the towers tall.”
[204] Fru Adelheid pushed back the chair she was leaning against:
“There does not appear to be room for a mother in your arrangement,” she said.
Her voice trembled, her eyes were large and angry. But Cordt rose and looked as calm as before:
“You went out of it, Adelheid. You did not wish to be there.” ”

“ She puckered her forehead and looked at him angrily.
“Then he begged you to sing the song once more and they crowded round you [99] and added their entreaties to his. You crossed the floor ... with your slow, sure gait.... You always walk in the same way, Adelheid ... like one who is not to be stopped. Your white dress trailed behind you; there was silence in the room.”
Cordt ceased for a moment. Fru Adelheid laid her head back in the chair and closed her eyes.
“Then you sang ... his song ... the one you were singing a minute ago at the old spinet.... Yes, you heard me applauding, Adelheid. ”

“ Fru Adelheid did not see him when she entered.
She moved slowly and stopped in the middle of the room, when she discovered that he was not by the fireplace. She was surprised at this, but soon forgot it, in her gayety and her lingering excitement at the evening’s entertainment, with her [96] mind full of bright and clever phrases and the lights gleaming in her great eyes.
She sat down to the spinet and laid her forehead against the keys. Something was singing inside her; her foot softly beat the carpet.
Then she sought among the music and sang:
Lenore, my heart is wrung. ”

“ People passed over the floor ... many and heavy footsteps. The spinning-wheel whirred, the spinet sang behind her back. The stars ran and shone, the doll rocked at her. The faces in the old chairs raised themselves on their long necks and pecked at her and grinned uncannily.
But the man who writhed through thorns called for help.... She could hear him call. He grew bigger ... he came [70] nearer.... She saw the blood drip from his naked limbs....
Fru Adelheid crept to the door with quivering hands and fearful eyes. ”

“ The child responded to the caresses of the lady with equal ardor.
So the little Adelaide was soon domesticated in the castle which her frolic spirit filled with gayety. The baroness renewed her youth in gazing upon hers, and the baron never scolded her, even when she took his pipe out of his mouth, or rummaged among his parchments.
As she grew up to womanhood, she became more serious and thoughtful. She was anxious to learn every thing touching her father, but on this subject the baroness could give her no information; and Karl, her grandfather, seemed equally averse to speaking of it. ”