The Devil's Elixirs (Horror Classic). ÐрнÑÑ‚ Гофман
a degree even of long-lost youthful courage. I felt once more that restless and vehement striving after the highest and most extended sphere of action, which the convent could allow to me. Accordingly, I insisted on being allowed to preach again on the next holiday, which after some consideration was granted to me.
Shortly before mounting the pulpit, I allowed myself another draught of the miraculous wine. The effects were even beyond my most sanguine expectations. Never had I spoken more ardently, impressively, or with greater onction, than on this day. My audience, as before, were confounded, and the rumour of my complete recovery was with inconceivable rapidity spread abroad.
Henceforward the church was regularly crowded, as on the first weeks of my former celebrity; but the more that I gained the applause of the people, the more serious and reserved did Leonardus appear, so that I began at last with my whole soul to hate him. My object, in acquiring an ascendancy over the multitude, was now fully attained; but in all other respects, my mind was disappointed, disquieted, and gloomy. In the friendship of my brethren I had lost all confidence. As for Leonardus, I believed that he was wholly actuated by selfish pride, and mean-spirited envy.
* * * * *
The grand festival of St Bernard drew near, and I burned with impatience to let my light shine in its fullest lustre before the Lady Abbess; on which account, I begged the Prior to form his arrangements in such a manner, that I might be appointed on that day to preach in the Cistertian Convent. Leonardus seemed greatly surprised by my request. He confessed to me, without hesitation, that he himself had intended to preach in the Cistertian Monastery; and had already fixed his plans accordingly. "However," added he, "it will no doubt be on this account the more easy for me to comply with your request; as I can excuse myself, on the plea of illness, and appoint you to attend in my place."
I attempted no apology for the indelicacy of such conduct; for my mind was possessed wholly by one object. The Prior changed his arrangements in the manner he had promised. I went to Kreuzberg, and saw my mother and the Princess on the evening preceding the ceremony. My thoughts, however, were so much taken up with the discourse that I was to deliver, of which the eloquence was to reach the very climax of excellence, that the meeting with them again made but a very trifling impression upon me.
I was at the old farm-house, too, in which my early days had passed away like a dream. I walked again through the neglected garden, where the trees were now in their fullest luxuriance. I stood upon the moss-grown terrace, mounted upon the tottering altan,1 on the top of the old tower, at one end, the better to behold the features of the landscape. Thence I saw the wanderings of the Saale gleaming amid the pine-tree forests; the towers of Kreuzberg and Heidebach on the north, and the Thuringian mountains, with the spires of Königswald, in the distance towards the south. The sunbeams played and shifted over the landscape;—the summer winds breathed fragrance, wafting to my ears the choral anthems from the Monastery, and from the assembled pilgrims. The scenes and their influences were the same, but I saw them with unheeding eyes. I felt them not; the days of innocence were already past, and my heart was agitated with earthly passions.
I felt no reproaching pangs of conscience, however, no sadness, nor regret; I pursued my one and only object, elated with the certainty of success.
* * * * *
The report had been duly spread through the town, that I was to preach, instead of the invalid Leonardus; and, therefore, an audience, perhaps greater than on any former occasion, was drawn together. Without having written a single note, and merely arranging mentally into parts the discourse which I was about to deliver, I mounted the pulpit, trusting only to that inspiration which the solemnity of the occasion, the multitude of devout listeners, and the lofty-vaulted church, would of necessity excite in my peculiarly constituted mind.
In this, indeed, I had not been mistaken. Like a fiery lava stream, the torrent of my eloquence flowed irresistibly onward. With many real anecdotes out of the life of St Bernard, I interwove ingenious pictures from my own invention, and the most pious applications of his glorious examples to the conduct of ordinary mortals, till in the looks of all, which were universally directed towards me, I read only astonishment and admiration. Thus my triumph was complete, and methought the trophy would be more brilliant than any that I had before won.
* * * * *
How anxiously were wound up my anticipations as to the reception which I was to receive from the Princess! How confidently, indeed, did I look for the highest and most unqualified expression of her delight! Nay, it seemed to me, as if she, in her turn, must now pay the homage of respect and deference to that individual, whom, but a few years before, she had filled with awe and unlimited veneration.
But in these hopes I was miserably disappointed. Having desired an interview, I received from her a message, that being attacked by sudden illness, she could not speak with any one. This notice was so much the more vexatious, since, according to my proud anticipations, illness should have only inclined her the more to receive consolation and spiritual aid from a being so nobly gifted and so highly inspired.
As to my mother, she seemed oppressed, and weighed down by a secret and overpowering grief, as to the cause of which, I did not venture to inquire, because the silent admonitions of my own conscience almost convinced me, that I myself had brought this distress upon her; although the particular means by which it had been produced, I was unable to define. She gave me a small billet from the Princess, of which, till my return to the Capuchin Monastery, I was not to break the seal.
For the rest of the day, (which was, as usual, spent in feasting and mirth,) I could think of nothing else, and scarcely was I arrived at home and in my cell, when with the utmost impatience I broke the seal, and read what follows:
"My dear son, (for still must I address you in this manner, the slightest variation of expression is like an external farewell to those whom we love,) by your discourse of to-day, you have thrown me into the deepest affliction. No longer has your eloquence been that of a heart whose affections are turned towards Heaven. Your inspiration was not that which bears the pious soul as if on seraph's wings aloft, so that it is enabled, in holy rapture and by anticipation, to behold the kingdoms of the blest. Alas! the pompous adornments of your discourse,—your visible effort, only to utter that which might be striking and brilliant, have sufficiently proved to me, that instead of labouring to instruct the community, and to stir up among them pious affections, you have striven only to acquire the approbation and wonder of the light and worldly-minded multitude. You have hypocritically counterfeited feelings which have no real existence in your heart. Nay, like a profane actor on the stage, you have practised gestures and a studied mien, all for the sake of the same base meed of wonder and applause. The demon of deceit has taken possession of you, and, if you do not return into yourself, and renounce the sins by which you are beset, will soon bring you to destruction.
"For, sinful, very sinful, are your present actions and conduct; in so much the more, as, by your vows, you are bound to renounce the world and its vanities. May the blessed St Bernard, whom to-day you have so shamefully offended, according to his celestial patience and long sufferance, forgive you, and enlighten your mind, so that you may recover the right path, from which, by stratagems of the devil, you have been thus distracted; and may he intercede for the salvation of your soul!—Farewell!"
As if I had been pierced by an hundred fiery daggers, these words of the Princess struck to my very heart; and, instead of receiving such admonitions gratefully, as a trial of patience and obedience, I burned with rage and resentment. Nothing appeared to me more unequivocal, than that the Prior had taken advantage of the overstrained piety (or methodism) of the Abbess, and sedulously prejudiced her against me. Henceforth I could scarcely bear to look upon him without trembling with indignation. Nay, there often came into my mind thoughts of revenge, at which I myself could not help shuddering.
The reproaches of the Abbess and the Prior were to me, on this account, only the more intolerable, that I was obliged, from the very bottom of my soul, to acknowledge their validity and truth. Yet always more and more firmly persisting in my course, and strengthening myself from time to time, with a few drops of the mysterious wine, I went on adorning my sermons with all the arts of rhetoric, and studying theatric gestures and gesticulations. Thus I secured always more and more