The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 359: what you’re looking at

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

THE BRONZE STATUE. 357 voice of John Zitzka; and, in obedi- ence to that voice which acted asa tal- isman upon the Taborite spirit, the dauntless two hundred poured with an irresistible fury upon the serried pha- lanx of the garrison. . Never was onslaught more terrific. Like incarnate demons did the republi- cans cut their desperate way through the soldiers of the aristocratic army. Clouds of smoke, beating down from the conflagration, enveloped the combatants at one moment, then cleared away at another, thus revealing all the horrors of the carnage. It seemed like an ap- palling display of human frenzy ; and for upwards of a quarter of an hour did this bloody act of the exciting drama last. At length Zitzka and his chosen party succeeded in hewing and hacking tor themselves a path to the edge of the battlements; wholesale were the hu- man trees of that animated forest of sol- diery felled by the Taborites. in order to make their road clear. Knee-deep +n blood did they wade; over the reek- ing, palpitating forms of the wounded, or the stiff aud stark corses of the slain, did they pursue their appalling path. But, as we have already stated, the edge of the rampart was gained at length ; thence the ‘Taborites leapt down ‘nto the moat, some being fortunate enough to alight upon the ropes stretch- ed across, and others falling into the wa- ter. Most of them succeeded in gain- ing the opposite bank, though a few were reached by the missiles thrown from the walls, and some were drown- ed. In fine, the night’s expeditions cost John Zitzka eighty of his most staunch and resolute adherents ; but, viewing their loss only with the eye of a general, and of a general, too, who had twenty thousand men under his command, he regarded it as nothing when contrasted with the advantage gained by the destruction of the grana- ries and provision-warehouses of the beleaguered castle. And in this calculation John Zitzka was right enough, for in a few days fa- mine began to stare the inmates of that stronghold in the face CHAPTER LXXXVIII. THE INVALID KNIGHT The mid-day radiance of an efful- gent sun attempered to a genial atmo- rN sphere the chill which was naturally characteristic of the declining autumn ; and there was a cheerfulness in the golden beams as they played upon the blackened ruins of Ildegardo Castle. In the humble chamber of the little tower on the summit of the Donjon, Sir Ernest de Colmar awoke to con- sciousness. He was lying in the couch—that couch where he had seen Satanais re- posing her beauteous form; and this reminiscence suddenly filled his mind with a thousand conflicting thoughts.— His first impulse was, therefore, to spring from the humble pallet, to seek some one who cauld answer all the questions which he longed to put, and to satisfy himself how much of all that his memory now revolved was a dream, and how much a stern reality. But vain was the attempt to quit the couch, scarcely could the knight lift his head from the pillow, for it fell back again as heavy as lead. Then the suspicion flashed to his mind that he must have been ill, very ill. And now he recollected that when the tremendous discovery of the iden- tity of Gloria and Satanais burst upon him, he had felt his senses leaving him, . but he had no consciousness of any in- terval between that moment and the present one of his re-awaking; on the contrary, it seemed as if he had merely closed his eyes at one instant to open them at the next. Thus weeks, months, or years might have fled without casting even a shade of their phases upon the Austrian war- rior’s mind, and without adding a single incident to the store of varied and won- drous circumstances which his memory had garnered up to the very moment when that interval of delirium or of: trance, whichever it were, began. But, oh! how could he now persuade himself that either the past or the pre- sent was nota dream? ‘here was no one in the chamber,—he was alone,— and all he knew was that he had re- mained an inmate of the turret-dormi- tory where the catastrophe of his love had taken place! No, this was not quite all that he now knew; for some other little facts and circumstances began to develop them- selves to his perception and set his con- jectures to work. ‘The chamber wore an air of comfort superior to his former ‘impression of its aspect. A curtain of coarse but warm material was stretched over the door, evidently to exclude the y * cE . ‘ —_ Pe . baer 4 > —e 24 aS a o— % = a : _ * a eae , er ~” _ <. - SO a ye - - * oe e oO Ae ee oe ee 0 lt 2 ae in oe ot * 4 -* aa ; = =. en ~~ P ae ~~ 4 ial +" = “=~ + ~ pone A. ee s —ee ~ <= ‘a : eh a . 4 - . ’ . ." - “7 gt 44 - . i? 1% ‘ i 7) i, 4 “ 4 ee o* : on ee See Ce he PHS oo” - d » oo; > . 5 —— - a o 7 ” * | i = é - - = , ; . . ‘ule « > “» oe e. . oe d i Fay = : ay mg oF Sh rm ee eh 7 a ~ ‘*s ye ay eta comicbooks.com