In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for
we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent,
and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark
corridors of the castle.
"And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins!" said the
old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the
village, and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. "It was a bad
family, and here its bloodstained annals were written," he continued.
"It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human
race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins,
down there."
He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building partly visible
through the foliage, a little way down the steep. "And I hear the axe of
a woodman," he added, "busy among the trees that surround it; he
possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point
out the grave of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve
the local traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the
rich and titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct."
"We have a portrait, at home, of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein;
should you like to see it?" asked my father.
"Time enough, dear friend," replied the General. "I believe that I have
seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I
at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now
approaching."
"What! see the Countess Mircalla," exclaimed my father; "why, she has
been dead more than a century!"
"Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered the General.
"I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly," replied my father, looking
at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I
detected before. But although there was anger and detestation, at times,
in the old General's manner, there was nothing flighty.
"There remains to me," he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of
the Gothic church--for its dimensions would have justified its being so
styled--"but one object which can interest me during the few years that
remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which,
I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm."
"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in increasing amazement.
"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a fierce flush,
and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his
clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle
of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.