As he spoke, he stumbled over the senseless body of his wife; and the tone of his mind once more strung up to the highest pitch of conscious agony, he cried, “Men!—men!—what are your pursuits and your passions?—your hopes and fears?—your struggles and your triumphs?—Look on me!—learn from a human being like yourselves, who preaches his last and fearful sermon over the corse of his wife, and approaching the bodies of his sleeping children, whom he soon hopes to see corses also—corses made so by his own hand!—Let all the world listen to me!—let them resign factitious wants and wishes, and furnish those who hang on them for subsistence with the means of bare subsistence!—There is no care, no thought beyond this! Let our children call on me for instruction, for promotion, for distinction, and call in vain—I hold myself innocent. They may find those for themselves, or want them if they list—but let them never in vain call on me for bread, as they have done—as they do now! I hear the moans of their hungry sleep!—World—world, be wise, and let your children curse you to your face for anything but want of bread! Oh that is the bitterest of curses—and it is felt most when it is least uttered! I have felt it often, but I shall feel it no longer!”—And the wretch tottered towards the beds of his children.
“Father!—father!” cried Julia, “are these your hands? Oh let me live, and I will do anything—anything but—”
“Father!—dear father!” cried Ines, “spare us!—tomorrow may bring another meal!”
Maurice, the young child, sprung from his bed, and cried, clinging round his father, “Oh, dear father, forgive me!—but I dreamed a wolf was in the room, and was tearing out our throats; and, father, I cried so long, that I thought you never would come. And now—Oh God! oh God!”—as he felt the hands of the frantic wretch grasping his throat—“are you the wolf?”
Fortunately those hands were powerless from the very convulsion of the agony that prompted their desperate effort. The daughters had swooned from horror—and their swoon appeared like death. The child had the cunning to counterfeit death also, and lay extended and stopping his breath under the fierce but faltering grip that seized his young throat—then relinquished—then grasped it again—and then relaxed its hold as at the expiration of a spasm.
When all was over, as the wretched father thought, he retreated from the chamber. In doing so, he stumbled over the corse-like form of his wife.—A groan announced that the sufferer was not dead. “What does this mean?” said Walberg, staggering in his delirium—“does the corse reproach me for murder?—or does one surviving breath curse me for the unfinished work?”
As he spoke, he placed his foot on his wife’s body. At this moment, a loud knock was heard at the door. “They are come!” said Walberg, whose frenzy hurried him rapidly through the scenes of an imaginary murder, and the consequence of a judicial process. “Well!—come in—knock again, or lift the latch—or enter as ye list—here I sit amid the bodies of my wife and children—I have murdered them—I confess it—ye come to drag me to torture, I know—but never—never can your tortures inflict on me more than the agony of seeing them perish by hunger before my eyes. Come in—come in—the deed is done!—The corse of my wife is at my foot, and the blood of my children is on my hands—what have I further to fear?” But while the wretched man spoke thus, he sunk sullenly on his chair, appearing to be employed in wiping from his fingers the traces of blood with which he imagined they were stained. At length the knocking at the door became louder—the latch was lifted—and three figures entered the apartment in which Walberg sat. They advanced slowly—two from age and exhaustion—and the third from strong emotion. Walberg heeded them not—his eyes were fixed—his hands locked in each other;—nor did he move a limb as they approached.
“Do you not know us?” said the foremost, holding up a lanthern which he held in his hand. Its light fell on a group worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt. The room lay in complete darkness, except where that strong and unbroken light fell. It glared on the rigid and moveless obduracy of Walberg’s despair, who appeared stiffening into stone as he sat. It showed the figure of the friendly priest who had been Guzman’s director, and whose features, pale and haggard with age and austerities, seemed to struggle with the smile that trembled over their wrinkled lines. Behind him stood the aged father of Walberg, with an aspect of perfect apathy, except when, with a momentary effort at recollection, he shook his white head, seeming to ask himself why he was there—and wherefore he could not speak. Supporting him stood the young form of Everhard, over whose cheek and eye wandered a glow and a lustre too bright to last, and instantly succeeded by paleness and dejection. He trembled, advanced—then shrinking back, clung to his infirm grandfather, as if needing the support he appeared to give.
Walberg was the first to break the silence. “I know ye who ye are,” he said hollowly—“ye are come to seize me—ye have heard my confession—why do you delay? Drag me away—I would rise
