The Marquise of O and Other Stories (33 page)

In the meantime, before the tribunal which the Emperor had set up in Basle, the charge of sinful invocation of divine judgement by ordeal had been brought against both Herr
Friedrich von Trota and his friend the lady Littegarde von Auerstein, and in accordance with the existing law they had been condemned to an ignominious death by fire at the place where the duel itself had been fought. A deputation of officials was sent to announce this sentence to the prisoners, and it would have been carried out at once, as soon as the Chamberlain was restored to health, if it had not been the Emperor's secret intention that Count Jakob Rotbart, against whom he could not suppress a certain feeling of mistrust, should be present at the execution. But the strange and remarkable fact was that Count Jakob still lay sick of the small and apparently insignificant wound which Herr Friedrich had inflicted on him at the beginning of the duel; an extremely corrupted condition of his bodily humours prevented its healing from day to day and from week to week, and all the skill of the doctors who were gradually called in from the whole of Swabia and Switzerland could not avail to close it. Indeed, a corrosive discharge, of a kind quite unknown to the medical science of those days, began to spread through the whole structure of his hand, eating it away like a cancer right down to the bone; in consequence, to the horror of all his friends, it had become necessary to amputate the entire diseased hand, and later, since even that did not put an end to the purulent corrosion, his entire arm. But this too, although commended as a radical cure, merely had the effect, as could easily have been foreseen nowadays, of increasing the malady instead of relieving it; his whole body gradually began to rot and fester, until the doctors declared that he was past saving and would even die within a week. The Prior of the Augustinian monastery, believing that the terrible hand of God was at work in this unexpected turn of events, vainly urged him to confess the truth concerning his dispute with the Duchess-Regent; the Count, shaken and appalled, once more took the holy sacrament on the truth of his testimony, and with every sign of the utmost terror committed his soul to eternal damnation if he had falsely slandered
the lady Littegarde. Now in spite of the viciousness of the Count's habits there were two reasons for believing that this assurance was essentially given in good faith: firstly because the sick man did indeed have a certain piety of disposition which seemed to preclude the swearing of a false oath at such a time, and secondly because the watchmen at Breda Castle, whom he claimed to have bribed to let him in secretly, had been interrogated and had definitely stated that this was correct, and that the Count had in fact been inside Breda Castle on the night of St Remigius. The Prior was therefore almost bound to conclude that the Count himself had been deceived by some unknown third party; and the wretched man, to whom this terrible thought had also occurred when he had heard of the miraculous recovery of the Chamberlain, had not yet reached the point of death when, to his utter despair, the new supposition was fully confirmed. For the reader should know that before the Count had begun to turn lustful eyes on the lady Littegarde he had already for a long time been conducting an improper liaison with Rosalie, her maid-in-waiting; almost every time her mistress paid a visit to him he used to entice this girl, who was a wanton and loose-living creature, into his room at night. Now on the occasion of Littegarde's last stay at his castle with her brothers she had received, as already mentioned, an amorous letter from him declaring his passion for her, and this had aroused the resentment and jealousy of the maid, whom the Count had already neglected for several months. She had had to accompany Littegarde on her immediate departure, but had left behind her a note to the Count in her mistress's name, in which she informed him that the indignation of her brothers at his behaviour made it impossible for them to meet now, but that she invited him to visit her, for the purpose he had in mind, on the night of St Remigius, in the apartments of her father's castle. The Count, delighted at the success of his enterprise, at once wrote a second letter to Littegarde assuring her that he would duly arrive on the night in
question, but asking her, in order to avoid any mischance, to send a trustworthy guide to meet him who would lead him to her rooms; and since the chambermaid, who was practised in all sorts of intrigue, had been expecting such a reply, she succeeded in intercepting it, and in another forged letter wrote to him that she would wait for him herself at the garden gate. Then, on the evening before the appointed night, on the pretext that her sister in the country was ill and that she wanted to visit her, she asked Littegarde for leave of absence, and having obtained her consent she in fact, in the late afternoon, left the castle carrying a bundle of belongings and set out in the direction of her home, making sure that everyone saw her do so. But instead of completing this journey she reappeared at the castle at nightfall, on the pretence that a storm was blowing up; and in order, as she said, not to disturb her mistress, as she wanted to start off again early the next morning, she managed to get herself accommodated for the night in one of the empty rooms in the tower, a part of the castle which was neglected and little used. The Count, who was able to get into the castle by bribing the keeper and was admitted at the garden gate at midnight, as agreed, by a veiled woman, suspected nothing, as one may well imagine, of the trick that was being played on him; the girl pressed a fleeting kiss on his lips and led him by way of various stairs and passages in the disused side wing to a room which was one of the finest in the castle itself, and in which she had already carefully shuttered the windows. Here she had taken his hand and made a tour of the doors, listening at each of them with a great air of mystery, and had warned him in a whisper, on the pretext that her brother's bedroom was close by, not to speak a word; whereupon she sank down with him on the bed that stood ready beside them. The Count, mistaking her shape and figure, was intoxicated with delight at having made such a conquest at his age; and when she dismissed him at the first light of
dawn, placing on his finger, as a souvenir of the night that had passed, a ring which Littegarde had received as a present from her husband and which the maid had stolen on the previous evening for this very purpose, he promised her to requite this gift, as soon as he got home, with another ring which his late wife had presented to him on their wedding day. And three days later he kept his word, secretly sending this ring to the castle, where Rosalie was again skilful enough to intercept it; but being perhaps apprehensive that this adventure might lead him too far, he sent no further word and found various pretexts for avoiding a second meeting. Later on, the girl was dismissed on account of a theft, the suspicion of which rested fairly clearly on her, and sent back to her parents' home on the Rhine, where in the course of nine months the consequences of her immoral life became visible; and on being very strictly questioned by her mother she named Count Jakob Rotbart as the father of her child and disclosed the whole story of her secret intrigue with him. As to the ring which the Count had sent her, she had fortunately only been able to offer it very cautiously for sale, fearing to be taken for a thief, and in fact its value was so high that she had not found anyone willing to buy it from her; consequently there could be no doubt that what she had said was true, and her parents, relying on this obvious piece of evidence, went to the courts and brought an action against Count Jakob for maintenance of the child. The courts, to which the strange story of the legal proceedings in Basle was already known, hastened to communicate this discovery to the imperial tribunal as being of the greatest importance for the outcome of the case before it; and since an official happened to be leaving just then for Basle on public business, they gave him a letter for Count Jakob Rotbart, enclosing the girl's sworn statement and the ring, in the hope of thus clearing up the terrible mystery which had become the chief topic of conversation in the whole of Swabia and Switzerland.

On the very day appointed for the execution of Herr Friedrich and Littegarde, which the Emperor, unaware of the doubts that had arisen in the mind of the Count himself, considered it impossible to postpone any longer, the official with this letter entered the room of the sick man, who was writhing to and fro on his bed in anguish and despair. ‘Enough!' cried the Count when he had read the letter and been given the ring, ‘I am weary of seeing the light of day! Get me a stretcher,' he added, turning to the Prior, ‘and take me out to the place of execution, wretch that I am: my strength is sinking into the dust, but I do not want to die without having performed one just deed!' The Prior, very much moved by this, at once did as he wished and had him lifted by four servants on to a litter; and just as an immense crowd, at the tolling of the bell, were gathering round the stake to which Herr Friedrich and Littegarde had already been bound, he and the wretched Count, who was clutching a crucifix, arrived at the spot. ‘Stop!' cried the Prior, as he had the litter set down in front of the Emperor's balcony. ‘Before you light that fire, listen to the words of this sinner, for he has something to tell you!' ‘What!' cried the Emperor, rising pale as death from his seat, ‘has God by his sacred verdict not declared the justice of his cause? And after what has happened how can you dare for one moment to suppose that Littegarde is innocent of the offence with which he charged her?' So saying, he descended from the balcony in amazement; and more than a thousand knights, whom the whole crowd followed down over the benches and barriers, thronged round the sick man's couch. ‘Innocent,' replied the Count, half raising himself from it with the Prior's support, ‘innocent as the almighty God declared her to be on that fateful day, in the sight of all the assembled citizens of Basle! For he was smitten with three wounds, each one of them mortal, and yet, as you can see, he is flourishing with vitality and strength; whereas one stroke from his hand, which scarcely seemed to touch the outermost surface of my life, has worked its
slow, terrible way through to the very core of it, and has cut me down in my strength as a storm fells an oak tree. But in case any doubter should still be unconvinced, here is the proof: it was her chambermaid Rosalie who received me on that night of St Remigius, whereas in the delusion of my senses I, wretch that I am, thought I held in my arms the lady herself, who has always spurned my advances with contempt!' The Emperor, hearing these words, stood as if petrified. Then turning towards the stake he dispatched a knight, ordering him to ascend the ladder himself and release the Chamberlain as well as the lady, who had already swooned in her mother's arms, and to bring them both before him. ‘Well, there is an angel keeping watch over every hair of your head!' he exclaimed when Littegarde, with her bosom half bared and her hair dishevelled, approached him with her friend Herr Friedrich, who was himself so moved by this miraculous deliverance that his knees almost gave way as he led her by the hand through the crowd of people who made way for them in wonder and awe. They knelt down before the Emperor, who kissed them both on the brow; and after asking the Empress for her ermine cloak and putting it round Littegarde's shoulders, he took the latter's arm, with all the assembled nobility looking on, intending to conduct her himself to the apartments of his imperial palace. And as the Chamberlain, too, was being clad in a plumed hat and knightly robe instead of the condemned criminal's smock he had been wearing, the Emperor turned to the Count where he lay wretchedly tossing to and fro on his litter, and moved by a feeling of pity, for after all it could not be said that Count Jakob had entered sinfully or blasphemously into the duel that had destroyed him, he asked the doctor who stood there whether there was any chance of saving the unhappy man's life. ‘There is none!' answered Jakob Rotbart, shaken by terrible convulsions and with his head supported on his doctor's lap, ‘and I have deserved the death I now die. For I confess now, since the arm of earthly justice will no longer reach
me, that I am the murderer of my brother, the noble Duke Wilhelm of Breysach: the villain who shot him down with an arrow from my armoury had been hired by me six weeks earlier to do this deed, by which I hoped to gain the crown!' And upon this declaration the black-hearted reprobate collapsed on to the litter and expired. ‘Oh, then it was as my husband the Duke himself suspected!' cried the Regent, who was standing beside the Emperor, for she too had followed the Empress down from the palace balcony to the square. ‘He said so to me at the very moment of his death but with broken words which I then scarcely understood!' The Emperor replied in indignation: ‘Then the arm of justice shall at least reach your dead body! Take him,' he cried, turning round to the constables, ‘and hand him over to the executioners, judged and condemned as he is; to brand his memory with shame let him burn at that same stake where we were about to sacrifice two innocent lives on his behalf!' And thereupon, as the corpse of the wretch burst into crackling red flames and the blast of the north wind scattered and blew it away in all directions, he led the lady Littegarde into the castle, with all his knights following. By an imperial decree he restored to her the inheritance of her father, of which her ungenerous and avaricious brothers had already taken possession; and only three weeks later the wedding of the brave and virtuous lovers took place in the palace at Breysach. The Duchess-Regent, delighted by the whole course the affair had taken, gave a large part of the Count's possessions, which had fallen forfeit to the law, as a bridal present to Littegarde. But the Emperor, after the marriage, awarded a golden chain of honour to Herr Friedrich; and as soon as he returned to Worms after the conclusion of his business in Switzerland, he gave orders that in the statutes governing sacred ordeal by combat, at all points where they assume that such a trial immediately brings guilt to light, the words ‘if it be God's will' were to be inserted.