Читать книгу The Mysteries of Florence - George Lippard - Страница 10

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FEAR * * * AND GIVE GLORY TO HIM, FOR THE HOUR OF HIS JUDGMENT IS COME—THE SMOKE OF THEIR TORMENT ASCENDETH UP FOR EVER AND EVER.—The Book.

A chamber with a low, dark ceiling, supported by massive rafters of oak; floor and wall of dark stone, unrelieved by wainscot or plaster—bare, rugged and destitute—in form, an oblong square, narrow in width, and extensive in length, with the impression of a coffin-like gloom and confinement, resting upon each dark stone and rugged rafter, while the air was insupportable with the scent of decaying mortality.

In the centre arose a rough table of massive oak, with a smoking light, burning in a vessel of iron, placed at each corner, flinging a dreary radiance through the darkness of the chamber.

The light threw its red and murky beams over the fearful burden of the table. It was piled with the unsightly forms of the dead. There were lifeless trunks, all hewn and hacked; there were discolored faces, green with decay; with the eyes scooped from the sockets, the livid skin dropping from the forehead, the jaw torn from its socket, and the brain, once the resting place of the mighty soul, protruding in all its discoloration and corruption over the bared brow; there were arms and limbs torn from the body, some yet wearing the hue of life, others rendered hideous and disgusting by the revel of the worm; there, in that lone room were piled up all these ghastly remains of humanity, these fearful mockeries of life, there rotting relics of what had once enthroned the GIANT SOUL.

The form of a muscular man, with chest of iron, and arms of brass, lay on the centre of the table, side by side with the figure of a fragile woman. The scanty locks of gray hair surmounted the half peeled forehead of the warrior, while the copious tresses of the woman drooped over the white cheek, the alabaster neck, and fell twining over the bosom, yet untainted by decay.

“Here,” cried Aldarin, with dilating eye—“Here, for twenty-one long years have I toiled. The sun shone over the beauty of spring, the luxury of summer, and yet I beheld him not. Autumn came with its decay, and winter with its cold, and yet Aldarin went not forth. Toil, toil, toil, while youth died in my veins, and age came wrinkling over my brow; toil, toil, toil, unceasing and eternal toil.

“Julian went to war, his plume waved over the ranks of battle. Aldarin toiled on, over the carcasses of the dead. Others have made friends among the living, and won honor from the great—it was mine to build a home amid the corses of the unburied dead, and to wring knowledge, wild and terrible, it is true, yet mighty knowledge, from the grasp of death. Toil, toil, toil, but not forever. It will come at last—the glorious secret.

“A few more weary days, a few more dreary nights, and the corse will speak, the alembic will give fort was! h the secret. The future speaks two words that fill my heart with fire—unbounded wealth—Immortal life!”

He looked around with a blazing eye and extended arm—“They rise before me, the host of victims—ghastly with the dead hue, gory with blood they rise, they raise their hands, and shriek my name? And yet, it was to be, it was to be, and it was! And he, the last, the most dread and fearful sacrifice—oh, Fiend, wring not my heart with throes of intolerable torture nor point to yon wan and pallid form! I tell thee when the last secret shall have been wrung from the lips of Death, then, then, he, aye, he may, may——”

He paused, he drooped his head low on his breast, a scarcely audible murmur broke from his lips. Two phrases of doubtful purport might alone be heard——

“Live again—” and then the murmur—“mighty secret——from his body—”

Aldarin turned from his dread and mystic reveries, he seized the scalpel, he commenced the work of knowledge, among the carcasses of the dead. Long he labored, and eagerly he toiled, but at last, as the solemn hours of the night wore on, he slept and dreamed a dream. Prostrate among the bodies of the dead, his arms flung carelessly on either side over the torn and mangled faces, Aldarin slept and dreamed.

And this was the Dream OF Aldarin the Fratricide.