The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 316: what you’re looking at

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

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Pea * —* * »? 314 into prime ministers—throwing into her tale a. sufficiency of Moslem ima- gery to sustain the deception—adorn- ing the architecture of her narrative with the richness of oriental sculpture, — bending some incidents to the plastic form suitable to her aims, suppressing others altogether, or inventing new ones —and assigning to Satan the part really and naturally played by the dreaded Chief of the Tribunal of the Bronze Statue—Satanais had exhibited. a con- summate skill in the adaptation of a plain and simple chronicle of interesting facts to the mysterious and unaccount- able objects which she doubtless sought to achieve by this tremendous dupli- city. ‘'Thus, in her ornate and high-flown oriental legend, the Lady Emilia be- came the Princess Almeria; while the good old pastor Heracles figured as_ the Armenian priest Heraclius. But nota word in her narrative of John Zitzka— not a word of the lost son of Baron Georgey! And on the other hand, there was not a word regarding the birth of twin sisters in Bernard’s his- tory—not a syllable respecting such a being as Satanais herself! Who, then, was Satanais? and how could she connect herself with the fa- mily of Ildegardo,—that. Ildegardo the baron whom she had typified as Idirim the king? Gloria, on the contrary, was a true character, no imaginary heroine, for Sir Ernest de Colmar had seen her, had known her, had become the object of her adoring love,—and had likewise been doomed to shudder at her crimes? But again and again recurred the ques- tion, ‘ Who, then, is Satanais 7’ If she were the sister of Gloria, then the Lady Emilia must have either mar- ried a second husband or else have borne an illegitimate child after Lord Ildegardo’s death? Or again, might she not have been in the way to become a. mother when that nobleman died of a broken heart and she was conveyed a captive to Manfredo Castle? But in Bernard’s history there was no men- tion of such an occurrence. Moreover, Gloria was six years old when that cap- tivity took place; and if her mother had given birth to a second child, this younger sister of Gloria’s would now be scarcely fourteen; and, therefore, it could not possibly be Satanais ! On. the. other hand, it was equally difficult to diseard the theory that Glo- ria and Satanais must be thus closely related, for theit wondrous resemblance THE BRONZE STATUE. to each other, setting aside the differ- ence of their complexions and. the co- lor of their hair, seemed to proclaim that they were sisters. ‘Their features were cast in exactly the same mould,— their eyes shone with the same. super- nal brilliancy. They were of the same height, their gait, their attitudes, their walk, their movements,—all were iden- tical! ‘hen there was the same gold- en melody of the voice, the same cap- tivating powers of language, the same love of mystery, and the same devoted attachment to that mother whose me- mory they both seemed to cherish so fondly! Again and again, then, re- curred the question,—‘ Who is Sata- nais !° But now sprang up in De Colmar’s mind another reflection scarcely less in- teresting in itself or less vitally impor- tant to him than al] the other bewilder- ing ideas which Bernard’s narrative ex- cited in its progress. For since the supernatural portion of the tale related by Satanais was now destroyed,—and since the parts assigned to Satan had really been performed by the Baron of Altendorf,—the question naturally sug- gested itseli—‘* Who was the champion in sable armour that had conquered Sir Ernest de Colmar upon the heath ?” We will not however delay the regu- lar course of our narrative in order to chronicle each reflection to which Ber- nard’s tale gave rise in the Austrian warrior’s soul : momentous indeed were all those thoughts, as they took their birth one after a nother during the de- velopment of the incidents which fell from the old man’slips. We must how- ever observe that it was with no ordina- ry difficulty, but with an almost incred- ible amount of self-command, that Sir Ernest de Colmar so far subdued his feelings as to avoid interrupting Ber- nard with a multiplicity of queries du- ring that narration;—and it likewise cost him no insignificant effort to restrain himself from bursting away from the side of that venerable man and seeking Satanais in the adjacent cell to demand an explanation of her conduct. But, beneath the excitement which Bernard’s history engendered and sustained with- in his soul, there was an under-current of profound interest which made him an almost breathless listener ;—and thus, while on the one hand he was urged by a powerful impulse to hasten to Sata- nais and demand the. elucidation of. all | those mysteries which bewildered and ‘tortured him, on the other hand he felt. "|" comicbooks.com