Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

state to receive what may be designated as the Sacrament of the new faith.”

      A murmur ran through the room, but Heiligenstern continued without wavering: “I mean thereby to describe that natural religion which, by instructing its adepts in the use of the hidden potencies of earth and air, testifies afresh to the power of the unseen Maker of the Universe.”

      The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an assumption of authority: “Let the treatment begin.”

      Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity. Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls. Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the little prince from his chair and laid him gently on the bed. The magician then leaned over the boy with a slow weaving motion of the hands.

      “If your Highness will be pleased to sleep,” he said, “I promise your Highness the most beautiful dreams.”

      The boy smiled back at him and he continued to bend above the bed with flitting hands. Suddenly the little prince began to laugh.

      “What does your Highness feel?” the magician asked.

      “A prickling … such a soft warm prickling … as if my blood were sunshine with motes dancing in it … or as if that sparkling wine of France were running all over my body.”

      “It is an agreeable sensation, your Highness?”

      The boy nodded.

      “It is well with your Highness?”

      “Very well.”

      Heiligenstern began a low rhythmic chant, and gradually the air darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which sparks could be seen flickering like fireflies about the reclining prince. The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence that seemed to envelop him in waves of exquisite sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and like a dark tepid sea were lapping about his body and rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like seaweed on the lift of the tide. He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding himself to a blissful dissolution.

      Suddenly he became aware that the hush was too intense, too complete; and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst terrifically into sound. A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through it like a tangible mass. The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round the little prince’s body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness, in which the confused herding movements of startled figures were indistinguishably merged. A flash of silence followed; then the liberated forces of the night broke in rain and thunder on the rocking walls of the room.

      “Light—light!” some one stammered; and at the same moment a door was flung open, admitting a burst of candle-light and a group of figures in ecclesiastical dress, against which the white gown and black hood of Father Ignazio detached themselves. The Dominican stepped toward the Duke.

      “Your Highness,” said he in a tone of quiet resolution, “must pardon this interruption; I act at the bidding of the Holy Office.”

      Even in that moment of profound disarray the name sent a deeper shudder through his hearers. The Duke, who stood grasping the arms of his chair, raised his head and tried to stare down the intruders; but no one heeded his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings, the magician’s appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might have personified the Prince of darkness drawn up undaunted against the hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched the little prince from his stretcher, and Maria Clementina, holding him to her breast, sat palely confronting the sorcerer. She alone seemed to measure her strength against his in some mysterious conflict of the will. But meanwhile the Duke had regained his voice.

      “My father,” said he, “on what information does the Holy Office act?”

      The Dominican drew a parchment from his breast. “On that of the Inquisitor General, your Highness,” he replied, handing the paper to the Duke, who unfolded it with trembling hands but was plainly unable to master its contents. Father Ignazio beckoned to an ecclesiastic who had entered the room in his train.

      “This, your Highness,” said he, “is the abate de Crucis of Innsbruck, who was lately commissioned by the Holy Office to enquire into the practices and doctrine of the order of the Illuminati, that corrupt and atheistical sect which has been the cause of so much scandal among the German principalities. In the course of his investigations he became aware that the order had secretly established a lodge in Pianura; and hastening hither from Rome to advise your Highness of the fact, has discovered in the so-called Count Heiligenstern one of the most notorious apostles of the order.” He turned to the priest. “Signor abate,” he said, “you confirm these facts?”

      The abate de Crucis quietly advanced. He was a slight pale man of about thirty, with a thoughtful and indulgent cast of countenance.

      “In every particular,” said he, bowing profoundly to the Duke, and speaking in a low voice of singular sweetness. “It has been my duty to track this man’s career from its ignoble beginning to its infamous culmination, and I have been able to place in the hands of the Holy Office the most complete proofs of his guilt. The so-called Count Heiligenstern is the son of a tailor in a small village of Pomerania. After passing through various vicissitudes with which I need not trouble your Highness, he obtained the confidence of the notorious Dr. Weishaupt, the founder of the German order of the Illuminati, and together this precious couple have indefatigably propagated their obscene and blasphemous doctrines. That they preach atheism and tyrannicide I need not tell your Highness; but it is less generally known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private vices from which even paganism would have recoiled. The man now before me, among other open offences against society, is known to have seduced a young girl of a noble family in Ratisbon and to have murdered her child. His own wife and children he long since abandoned and disowned; and the youth yonder, whom he describes as a Georgian slave rescued from the Grand Signior’s galleys, is in fact the wife of a Greek juggler of Ravenna, and has forsaken her husband to live in criminal intercourse with an atheist and assassin.”

      This indictment, pronounced with an absence of emotion which made each word cut the air like the separate stroke of a lash, was followed by a prolonged silence; then one of the Duchess’s ladies cried out suddenly and burst into tears. This was the signal for a general outbreak. The room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke’s sbirri making their way quietly through the crowd. The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm flung about his trembling acolyte. The Duchess, her boy still clasped against her, remained proudly seated; but her eyes met Odo’s in a glance of terrified entreaty, and at the same instant he felt a clutch on his sleeve and heard Cantapresto’s whisper.

      “Cavaliere, a boat waits at the landing below the tanners’ lane. The shortest way to it is through the gardens and your excellency will find the gate beyond the Chinese pavilion unlocked.”

      He had vanished before Odo could look round. The latter still wavered; but as he did so he caught Trescorre’s face through the crowd. The minister’s eye was fixed on him; and the discovery was enough to make him plunge through the narrow wake left by Cantapresto’s retreat.

      Odo made his way unhindered to the anteroom, which was also thronged, ecclesiastics, servants and even beggars from the courtyard jostling each other in their struggle to see what was going forward. The confusion favored his escape, and a moment later he was hastening down the