The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

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On reaching the city gate, Sir Ernest de Colmar, for he was the warrior thus | going forth armed by night, was chal- | lenged by the sentinels, who at once and peremptorily declared that he could | not be permitted to leave Prague at that hour, and in such martial garb, without | a special passport signed by General | Zitzka. Sir Ernest was prepared for this ob- stacle,. and while affecting to remon- strate with the soldiers on the severity of the proceeding, he drew off his gaunt- let and displayed the ring which the chief of the T'aborites. had given him, | as the reader will remember, on the oc- casion when he sojourned at the en- campment in the wood. The jewel flashed brightly in the glare of the torch which one of the men had brought forth from the guard-house, and the eflect was instantaneous. ‘Pass on,’ said the officer on duty at that station; and Sir Ernest de Colmar, drawing on his gauntlet once more, rode through the gates. His horse’s hoofs clattered on the drawbridge ; and then the sounds were continued in a mere subdued manner along the road which traversed the eas- tern suburb. In a few minutes the outskirts of the city were passed; and the rude wiud swept with a wilder note and a more gushing vehemence over | the open country. — On went the dauntless warrior, be- striding the gallant, steed that bore him so lightly although clad in that iron pa- noply ; and the crimson plumes sur- mounting his helm streamed with loud flutterings in the gale. | His right hand held the long quiver- ing lance which was so soon to bear its portion in the fray ; his shield hung for THE BRONZE STATUE. Satan! It wasa night such as imagination would depict as well snited tor a combat ~ of this terrible nature; a night when the gushing wind made the murderer’s corpse sway to and fro as it hung to the , gallows-tree ; when the churchyard re- sounded to those hollow moans which seemed the wail of damned spirits re- visiting the spot where their mortal forms lay decomposing in humid graves —when oceans roared and rivers mur- mured as if with voices capable of me- nacing the brave mariner and mocking the drowning one—when even the mightiest towers and the loftiest battle- ments shook and quaked beneath the influence of the storm-wind—when the vast forest rustled from end to ead with a sound as if a myriad horsemen were careering madly over fields of the ripe golden wheat—when the miser sate crouching over his hoards fearful lest every noise be the violence heralding the irruption of plunderers—when the flames waved to and fro, on the summit. of Vesuvius and A£tna, like tongues of lurid fire thrust forth from the jaws of monstrous serpents; and when the criminal lay quailing on his sleepless couch, as if the voices of heaven were borne in appalling menace upon his ear by the wings of the tempest! Such a night as this it was; a night which fancy would conceive as. the. fit- ting season when the murderer would lay in ambush for the solitary traveller ; when the bones of the dead would rat- tle in the damp vaults of the church and the skeleton in the closet of the anato- mist; when lawless banditti would as- sail the rural mansion, carrying. fire, and death, and desolation into its halls; when the huge spectre of the Brocken would sit upon the summit of his crag- gy haunt and mingle the voice of his infernal mockery with the awful roar of the whirlwind; when the howling wolves would sweep in terror through the waving forest, andthe savage jackal render night more hideous still with his cries imitative of human agonies; when the laboring ship. would creak from stem to stern as if about to part with erashing din into a thousand pleces; when the cataract and the tor- | rent would pour down with the vielence the present at the saddle-bow ; and to | and the din of an accumulated volume his side was suspended the huge cross- | of water; and when the swollen rivers handled sword. breaking its embankment as a giant Thus armed—thus accoutred—thus | may snap. straws asunder, would rush protected at all points, did Sir Ernest | over the meadows and plains, carrying do Celmar ride forth from the city of | desolation to the farms and the hamlets;- Prague to do battle for the Daughter of | and sweeping away the cottagers homes comicbooks.com