The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 347: what you’re looking at

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

THE BRONZE STATUE. 345 of those dreadful subterraneans. That | dorf was surveying him with the grim single note of the death-knell boomed | satisfaction of a triumphant rival; the through the hall of the Bronze Statue ; | sworn servitors were standing motion- and the image itself seemed to quiver | less as statues nround the unhappy no- as its colossal form responded in metal- | bleman who was to become the second lic echo from its hollow interior. victim to the Bronze Statue that night ; ‘Twice again, lady, will the bell|and on the threshold of the hall of the strike,’ whispered one of the Brothers | colossal image the Carthusian was lean- Schwartz. ‘and at the third note you|ing against the door-post, with folded must meet your doom.’ ‘arms and with a fiendish expression of The sound of the knell had struck| mingled malice and ferocious blood- upon the soul of the miserable woman | thirstiness upon his countenance. Such with the numbness of a consternation, | was the aspect of the group which a silencing her screams in a moment as if| lamp, borne by one of the servitors, her tongue had grown palsied, and | threw into strong relief in the circular freezing the blood which an instant be- | chamber, on the walls of which the fore had been boiling with the fiery | shadows of those men in those several] heat of fever in her veins. But the | attitudes were ominously flung. mild, mournful, and even compassionate | And the baroness—Oh ! who can tone in which the eldest Schwartz had | penetrate into all that was now passing addressed that solemn warning to her | in the mind of this wretched, wretched ear, recalled her as it were to herself’ ‘woman? But perhapt that mind had and catching with eager avidity at the ; suddenly become a blank ; for there she almost desperate hope thus inspired, knelt motionless—silent—with her head she exclaimed in a voice of frenzied | upon her bosom; and the bosom itself wildness, ‘Spare me, spare me! My | gave no perceptible heavings. God! I am not prepared to perish thus| Suddenly the bell—the bell of doom suddenly ; spare me, spare me ” —sounded for the third time; and the ‘We cannot!’ answered the same ex- | instant that its note struck upon the ear ecutioner who had before spoken.— | of the fated woman, she sprang wildly ‘Were we to refuse to perform our| up, like a corpse that is galvanized— duty, our own lives would instantane- 'her countenance livid and hideous, her ously pay the forfeit. Think not, how- features horribly convulsed, and her ever, that we throw into our present | eyes glaring on the Statue with an ex- painful, wretched, horrible avocation, | pression of mingled anguish and terror any spirit of revenge for the wrongs, | that no pen can describe. She endea- the deep, irreparable, and erompotenie sted BOY to speak; but not a word could wrongs, which we have suffered at your | she utter—not even to a scream or a hands !’ ‘moan could she give vent; and in an- ‘ No—oh! no—God forbid!’ mur- other instant, when the executioners mured the second brother. ‘ We for- | again fastened their hold upon her, all give you, unhappy woman—from the the frenzied wildness of her aspect sub- bottom of our hearts do we forgive you!’ | sided on a sudden—a numbness seized ‘Yes, tremendous though your cru- | upon her—a film came over her eyes— elty has been towards men who never |the lamp, the men, the Statue all dis- by word nor deed offended you, lady,’ appeared from her view, and she re- added the third brother, ‘we pardon, | mained unconscious of existence ! sincerely pardon you?’ - Administer restoratives !’ exclaimed A second time did the bell—the aw- the Carthusian, speaking in a loud and ful bell—sound with a hollow, booming | commanding tone from the spot where din; and the iron note moaned with its | he still kept his stand, * [t is not while oscillating metallic intonation through- | in a swoon that a victim may be offered out the vast subterraneans. to the Bronze Statue! No, the ago- ‘O God! have mercy upon me!’ | nies and tortures of that death must be murmured the wretched baroness, as | felt in all their poignancy !’ | she sank upon her knees, her head fall-| One of the brothers Schwartz was ing upon her bosom. accordingly compelled to pour a strong hen all was still— all was silent, for | cordial down the throat of the baroness ; upwards of a minute; for in the cireu- ‘and the miserable woman was almost lar chamber the Marquis of Schomberg ‘instantly restored to life—or rather to was praying fervently but with voicoless the keen, horrible, and distracted con- lips, and only in the depths of his own) sciousness of the tremendous agonies harrowed soul. 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