They were not the surgeons of Naples who essayed to galvanize volition through my paralyzed limbs, but those who knew the utmost resources of their art.  And so I lived,—­lived, too, by reason of my inextinguishable vitality, by reason of this spark that will not quench,—­and so I came to Hellberg.  It would have been mockery to give this shapeless hulk to sentence, and then to headsman or hangman; perhaps, too, her haughty name had been involved; and so I was never brought to trial, and so I am at Hellberg.

And I have never set foot on the ground again.  But, oh, to touch it for a moment, to sit anywhere on the summer mould, to pull down the sun-quivering, sun-steeped branches about me, to scent the fresh grass as it springs to the light!  Oh. but to touch the sweet, kind earth, the warm earth, silent with ineffable tenderness and soothing, to feel it under my hand, to lay my cheek there for a moment, while it drew away pain and weariness with its absorbing, purifying power!  Oh, but to lie once more where the blossoms grow!  Soon, soon, they will grow above me!  Soon the kind mother will cover me!

* * * * *

What had happened in the outer world I knew not till you came.  I fancied Lenore returned, breathing Austrian air, and living under the same horizon that girds me in.  Sometimes I have seen a distant cavalcade skimming over the vale, as once we careered over the Campagna, when she handled her steed as another woman handles her needle, and the sweet wind fanned peach-tints to her cheeks and drew out unravelled braids of gold in lingering caress.  She could have come to me, had she pleased, then:  this old chief who rules the place was her father’s friend and hers.—­But look I but see!  Who is it comes now,—­sweeps round the donjon flank?  Lean over the embrasure, and learn!  Ah, man, are my eyes so old, my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night?  They have gone on,—­or did they enter, think you?  Or yet, there is to be carousal, perhaps, in the halls beyond and below, and she comes to join the gay feast; she will drink healths in red wine, will listen to flattering dalliance with pleased eyes, will utter light laughs through the lips that once glowed to my kisses, and will forget that the same roof which shelters the revellers shelters also her lover dying in moans!  Careless—­Best so! best so!  What cavalier whispered in her ear as she passed?  Have years tarnished her beauty?  Ah, God! this wind, that maddens me now, a moment since touched her!

Anselmo, I will go in.  This vault of heaven with its spotless blue, this wide land that laughs in festive summer, these winds that lift my hair and come heavy with odors,—­these do not fit with me, I burlesque the fair face of creation.  O invisible airs, that softly sport round the castle-towers, why do you not woo my soul forth and bear it and lose it in the flawless cope of sky?