The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 399: what you’re looking at

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

THE BRONZE STATUE. 397 dy ;—and thus at length in that black marble tomb reposed the ill-fated Er- menonda, Baroness of Altendorf! The ceremony was over, the mourn- ers had retired from the vaults—the lights were extinguished therein—and day was now beginning to dawn upon the grey towers of Altendortf. Angela had retired to the chamber prepared for her reception : the Baron had likewise sought the solitude of his own apartment ;—but John Zitzka, the Count of Rosenberg, and the old stew- ard Hubert remained closeted together in order to give due vent to their me- lancholy feeling by a full outpouring of all those incidents which in any way regarded the hapless lady whose re- mains had just been consigned to the tomb. We shall not record this mournful and profoundly interesting conversation pretisely as it occurred, but we shall weave into a continuous thread the facts and circumstances that were then de- veloped and discussed in detail. CHAPTER XCVIII. THE HISTORY OF ERMENONDA. TwENTY-FIVE years previous to the date of those incidents which we have beon relating, the old Count de Rosen- berg was slain in a feud with some powerful neighbor. He left behind him a widow and two children, the elder of whom was a son and the younger a daughter. ‘The son succeeded to the ancestral title and became the Count of Rosenberg, who has figured so often in our narrative; and the daughter was the lovely but unfortunate Ermenonda. The countess was one of those wo- men whose majestic beauty hears the stamp of an indomitable haughtiness, and whose lofty pride flashes in every glance of the large dark eyes, and pro-, claims itself in every smile that appears upon the lips, as well as in every move- ment of the stately form, and every ges- ture where gracefulness itself is full of queen-like dignity. Proud of her own family, which was one of the richest and oldest in all Bohemia, the countess was likewise proud of the race with which she had connected herself by marriage; and she was proud also of the handsome son and of the beauteous daughter who bore that same haughty name of Rosenberg. At the time of their father’s death the young count wasabout twenty-three, and Ermenonda was. only fifteen. The former was indeed remarkably hand- some, and the latter was of a loveliness not. often paralleled. Neither appeared to inherit the lofty pride which had icharacterised their father, and which ‘ruled every word and action on the part of their mother; and the condescension —or rather, the affability of their de- portment towards their inferiors, won for them the regard of all the depen- dants and vassals on the Rosenberg es- tates, but sometimes drew down upon them the maternal remonstrances against what her ladyship looked upon as ‘ an undue familiarity with menials.’ Never- theless, with a view to render her daugh- ter an accomplished horse-woman, the countess (who had herself been an in- trepid huntress in her earlier years,) did not hesitate to send Ermenonda forth into the forest, to scamper along the shady avenue upon a beautiful pony, with perhaps only a single page in at- tendance upon her. ‘The servitor thus selected* to follow and take care of the young lady, had been chosen for the duty on account of his own extraordinary skill in horsemanship ; but it never once struck the Countess of Rosenberg that it was quite possible for the handsome youth of twenty to make a tender im- pression upon the heart of the girl of fifteen or sixteen. Her ladyship had certainly blamed both her son and daugh- ter, more than once, for being too con- descending towards their inferiors ; but it never entered the range of her calcu- lations, much less of her fears, that the high-born daughter of the house of Ro- senberg could possibly stoop to love the obscure page John Zaktiz ! Yet such was the result of the mo- ther’s imprudence in thus throwing her innocent young daughter and the hand- some page so much in each other’s so- ciety, and affording them opportunities of being so frequently alone together. Zaktiz was not only handsome in coun- tenance, but was iikewise tall in stature and symmetrical in form; his skill in horsemanship was remarkable — his courage in the hunt had raised the envy of the oldest sportsmen—and his expe- rience in the use of martial weapons rendered him too dangerous to be pro- voked as an enemy. In addition to these qualifications which stamped him with all the attributes of the noblest chi- valry, he was generous-hearted, frank ‘n his manners, and ever ready to @s- comicbooks.com pam : = Ae »* ; i rita ¢ - ; -' . >