Boboli. The priest tried to be satisfied | Diego, said: "Truly, my domestic, thy with the story he had heard, but his trou- precious existence promises to attain to ble could not subside instantaneously: to some notoriety. Here am I, even in this aid, however, in that desirable effect, he remote corner of the globe, taken to task applied to his lips the goblet of Lachrymæ, for my grand experiment. Holy church, handed to him by the physician, and after in the shape of this corpulent padre, will, one or two draughts, became a much more I fear, cause me no small amount of troutranquil man. His eye lost its look of ble." As he directed his eye towards the overwrought terror, and the ruddy tinge Creole, the features of the man became came back to the plump cheek, which be- darkened with a sort of animal rage; but fore had lost every trace of color. there was blended with it a certain bewildered look, as of one wandering in the delirium of a fever, which was truly piteous to behold. With an uncertain movement, he advanced towards his master, and emitted the same hoarse murmur before described. The physician looked scrutinizingly at his servant, as if coolly observing the symptoms of a patient, and then addressing him said: "Good Diego, go down to old Gianetta, who will doubtless be pleased with her companion. I can now quite dispense with your presence." The Creole moved mechanically to the door, much with the same aspect as a dog which obeys the command of a human creature, whom it feels to be a superior and controlling power. "Signor Klindinger," he said, "how is it that you fear not to retain this man in your service, considering he may one day break out a more violent lunatic than before? And, truly, notwithstanding your confidence in your art, I should be inclined to predict some such catastrophe; for methinks nothing but smouldering madness could produce an expression like that which I have beheld. The eye," continued the padre, shuddering slightly-"ah! that was indeed terrible. Why, signor, the man might well be taken for a jettatore. I felt that glance shoot through my marrow, and congeal my very blood. Would to God, worthy doctor, you were a believer in our holy church-then would it be possible to exercise on this wretched being the healing power of religion. I, signor, possess a reliquary, which has in truth effected wondrous miracles, and this I shall be happy to place at your disposal: even with the drawback of incredulity, I doubt not that it will prove beneficial." The doctor listened with much apparent deference, and thanking the good padre, professed himselfimbued with much respect towards the miraculous relics, although he could not, unfortunately, lay claim to the requisite amount of faith. At this moment, the door opened, and Diego again appeared, and approached, as if for the purpose of making some communication. His eye blazed very bright, and was directed towards the priest with an unpleasant stare. He seemed inclined to speak, but his lips emitted nothing more than a vague, hoarse murmur: his master at once comprehended this rude language, and turning to the terrified priest, informed him that the message of Diego was to convey that he the padre-was required without. The good man, hurriedly taking leave of his host, started up, and as quickly as possible made his way out of the house. On his disappearance, the doctor indulged in a short sardonic laugh; and with an expression coldly malignant, turning to This Diego was doubtless a singular and fearful puzzle: whatever might be the secret connected with him, it was known to no other than the man of science, who regarded him, apparently, more in the light of a cunning machine than as a being of the same species with himself. It is a fact well ascertained, subsequent to the occurrences here narrated, that Doctor Klindinger had been known to remove suddenly from various places where he had made his abode, in consequence of the attention attracted by this hateful Creole. Half-whispered stories there were of various mysterious doings between master and servant, which made people's blood run somewhat cold, and rendered the presence of the physician excessively odious and repulsive. In this simple Italian village, he had reckoned, it seemed, on being left to follow out his scientific ideas in peace; but he was woefully mistaken. The good folks had eyes, ears, and tongues, and made up for their incapacity to discover the secret of the doctor's art, by an amount of conjecture which, if not of the most acute kind, was at least rich in fancy. Not many weeks had Dr. Klindinger been settled in his new abode, and already had his pursuits been closely watched, and he himself the subject of general inquiry. The old woman whom he had employed as his housekeeper, after the first day, absolutely refused to sleep in the house. She would not, she said, rest under the same roof with this diavolo Creole. With difficulty did the physician, by ample recompense, induce her to remain even during the day. It was not alone pecuniary consideration, however, which induced the excellent Gianetta to do even so much. Her curiosity was strongly at work; and what with the desire of satisfying it, and the importance of being in a position to do so more easily than her neighbors, the good woman's terror was sufficiently neutralized and kept within due bounds. She had, nevertheless, still need of great powers of endurance, for startling and fearful were the appearances around her. This hideous Diego seemed actually possessed of a devil. He was as mischievous as a baboon, unless under the eyes of his master, and, like that animal, was endowed with singular powers of uncouth mimicry; he also appeared to have some faint perception of the faculty of humor, and in several ways worried and tortured his ancient fellow servant he would steal behind her back at times, and on suddenly turning round, she would catch him grinning diabolically, as if enjoying her terror; then he stole her cates and preserves, for he was an enormous glutton, with a maw, in fact, which appeared as if it could never be appeased. It was evident, however, with all the pranks of Diego, that he still labored under a sense of restraint and inferiority; he would often crouch in a corner on hearing the voice of his master, and exhibit every symptom of the most abject terror. Even of Gianetta he entertained a sort of apprehension, for she had only to look at him somewhat sternly, when he would sneak off with a subdued and drooping aspect. There were occasions, certainly, when he did indulge in desperate paroxysms of fury, and he was then intolerable to behold. Once that Gianetta had threatened to have him corrected by his master for some piece of thievery, he started up and sprang at her like a tiger, with such a desperate, fiendish look and howl, that the poor dame declared to the doctor that no reward would induce her to remain another hour in the house. In vain the Signor Klindinger promised, for the future, to keep such a watch over the Creole that he would never again venture upon such measures; in vain he inflicted on the of fender the severest corporal punishmentstill Gianetta's terror could in nowise be allayed; she would not stay, and departed with her nerves dreadfully shaken, and the mystery she had come to investigate still undiscovered. No other ancient female could be found to replace her; so the doctor, albeit averse to a juvenile domestic, as being likely to promote greater facility of intercourse between his establishment and his curious neighbors, was compelled to accept the proffered services of a certain young damsel named Bianca, whose glowing olive cheek and clear eye. indicated a considerable amount of health and spirit. Bianca was a plump and handsome Hebe, and the horrible Creole at first sight of her actually betrayed considerable signs of admiration: he stared and chattered until the poor girl became faint with terror; and it was not until the doctor had subjected him to another course of discipline, that he ceased his disagreeable manifestations. The occupation of Diego was solely to wait upon his master; this office he performed in much the same manner which one would observe in the movements of a well-trained monkey: his actions seemed to be the result of simple instinct alone, directed into a certain channel by means of the controlling human agency to which he was subject; his attempts at speech were barbarous, resembling the jabber of an idiot; but his master could, after some pains, teach him to pronounce many words and phrases, so as to make himself quite intelligible; yet with such a voice and manner as one could not, after all, suppose were those of a human creature. Sometimes it seemed not less astonishing to hear speech from Diego, than if it were emitted from the mouth of an orangoutang, or even the most inferior species of monkey. Dr. Klindinger, it was observed, had an antipathy, if not a feeling of positive_malignity, towards his unfortunate attendant. Cold as he now was, the man of science bore in his face the traces of intense and violent passions: that icy aspect was evidently the result of a nature once convulsed to its centre, and at length, exhausted of all its fire, arisen from the ruins of the past into the calm cold region of intellectual abstraction. With his mysterious attendant, the doctor was frequently shut up, and loud altercations, as it were, had been heard between them. Once, the girl Bianca was intrepid enough to steal on tiptoe to the chamber door, and peep within. There she saw a strange sight: the Creole, apparently a corpse, lying back on a couch, and the doctor administering to him some liquor out of a phial. After a short time, the creature revived, and then the girl heard an angry howl, but not certainly proceeding from the lips of Diego; no-it came as if from another corner of the room. And now-was it fancy ?—a third, a shadowy presence as it seemed, hovered above the pair. The girl might be mistaken, for she could not see quite distinctly. A creeping sensation of terror at length overcame her, and she was fain to betake herself immediately to the lower apartments. It was now about midsummer, and as Father Boboli was returning from a distant mission, he had occasion to pass by the secluded residence of Dr. Klindinger. The evening had begun to set in, and the padre was not free from some serious apprehensions as he approached the mysterious premises. There was a large garden adjoining the cottage, dark with tall yews and myrtles, and having a wilderness of rich flowers now trailing around, half wild from neglect. In this garden, the priest heard the unskilful tinkle of a guitar, accompanied by a strange hoarse voice; then a slight rustle, and at length the words "Padre Boboli, Padre Boboli !" pronounced with a chuckling accent. All at once, the head of the Creole was seen to emerge from the shade of the trees, and appear over the slight enclosure of the garden, looking out with a grotesquely horrible grin at the unhappy priest. He seemed mischievously inclined, but at this moment the doctor was heard in a loud voice to summon "Diego." The Creole instantly retreated, and the padre was not slow in hastening in another direction. He had received a serious fright, from the effects of which he actually became ill. In his sick-chamber he requested the attendance of Dr. Klindinger, and was in due time waited upon by the physician. Are you aware, Signor Doctor," said the padre, "that my present illness has been actually caused by the sudden and threatening appearance of your Creole last evening? Doctor, doctor! why do you persist in allowing that horrible being to rove at liberty, and thus perhaps endanger the life and reason of many persons? You will infallibly bring upon yourself the censures of the church and the authority of the law. He should be at once confined in some safe asylum, or evil will undoubtedly come of the affair." I protest, reverend padre," said the doctor, "you are unnecessarily alarmed. My servant is incapable of committing any dangerous deed, unless on some serious provocation, or when injudiciously treated. I allow him sometimes to walk in that garden for the necessary air and exercise: it is the only spot he can seek for that purpose, since our worthy villagers would certainly stone him were he seen outside the bounds of my residence. His sudden appearance before you, Signor Padre, was simply a token of recognition, perhaps of reverence; for be it known to you, that this man had been, as I understand, before his unfortunate madness, a devout and zealous Roman Catholic." 66 Say you so, indeed?" replied the priest. "Then, of a truth, the poor wretch must have meant to solicit my ghostly ministration in some way. I would he were not so horrible, and I would certainly impart to him all the consolation in my power. As it is, however, I cannot overcome the terror I feel at the sight of him: it is unaccountable, inexplicable," said the puzzled padre. "It may be," said the doctor, "that after a space Diego will be so far advanced towards perfect sanity, as to lose in some measure this expression, which seems to have so strange an effect upon your reverence. It was produced, I have no doubt, by the poor wretch's gross ill-treatment in that miserable asylum from whence he was rescued by me. It is simply the ef fect of suffering and terror, reverend padre, and will, in all probability, fade away by degrees out of his countenance." The padre appeared more composed at this suggestion; and after receiving a prescription at the hands of the physician, allowed him to take his departure homewards. Some days after the attendance of the physician upon Father Boboli, it was understood in the village that Dr. Klindinger had asked and obtained permission to remove from his present abode to an ancient mansion in the vicinity, for many years unoccupied, and now in some degree a ruin. The flickering light of a torch fell upon the figures of the pale physician and his servant as they entered the gloomy portal in the stillness of the night. The giant pines and larches moped and mowed to each other with faint whispers of some stranger advent than these old walls had ever witnessed before. Mystery and horror were now within them; so said each leafy tongue to the low winds which stole on hurriedly to hear the story. There were moments when Diego knew absolute gaiety. He grew horribly frolicsome, and then his degradation was more painfully apparent: he would dance, and caper, and whoop after a hearty meal— the very realization of the mere human animal. Many of the lower passions were strongly developed in him, and looked out The old castello was, in truth, remote with fearful distinctness from those perfect and desolate enough to secure the new and chiseled features. He could exhibit a inmates from all intrusion: thither none strong degree of envy and jealousy upon of the villagers ever ventured. Year by occasions of a kind perfectly identical with year had the sculptured lions above the those passions in the inferior animals. He gateway frowned grimly down upon va- positively abhorred the sight of a handcancy and silence, and the discolored and some young fellow whom he had seen fungi-clothed walls been unwarmed by sometimes rather lovingly caress the fair any human breath. In the neglected Bianca outside the latticed window, and garden, a white marble fountain sent up who generally contrived to see her once, its melancholy song to the sky out of the at least, in every week. He certainly graceful ruins of its beauty; the broken possessed strong acquisitive propensities, figures of faun and dryad lay on the for the jingling and sparkling of some ground, wreathed with the flowering gold pieces which he once beheld so creepers which overran the crumbling wrought upon him, that he instantly structure. One statue only remained darted upon the treasure, and was with perfect-that of the rural Pan, whose much difficulty deprived of it. All these Iudicrous deformity contrasted strangely with the sad loneliness of the surrounding scene. In this abode of departed grandeur had the doctor and his servant now resided for many weeks, uninterrupted save by the daily visits of Bianca in her character as superintendent of the household. She, poor damsel, was rather ill at ease, for besides the chilling solitude of the castello, which could not but raise up superstitious fancies in her head, she had also to contend with the disagreeable attentions of Signor Diego. He haunted her footsteps perseveringly, but yet in a timid, sneaking way, as if still fearful of punishment. It was inexpressibly repulsive to her to behold this being, wearing all the outward attributes of humanity, imbued with all the fulness of life, yet wanting, apparently, its highest and most precious element. He would sit for hours in a corner of the room, with his peculiar vacant stare, and muttering from time to time some unintelligible gibberish. There seemed really to be no spiritual link connecting his nature with that of the human family-no mental affinity of any kind. Some fatal but indefinable want was there, which deprived him of any place in the scale of his species. On the brute creation he appeared to have the same repulsive effect; the house-dog shrank from his touch with dismay, as if, by its instinct, it recognized a thing anomalous in creation. frailties did, like so many rank weeds, flourish luxuriantly in the nature of the unhappy Diego; but they were none which are not indigenous to the material soil of humanity. Sacred is the thought that to this source alone is to be attributed the empire of that evil by which our world is darkened and disfigured-finite in its nature as the corporeal frame from whence it sprang, so must all evil one day dissolve and perish, leaving that soul which is incapable of pollution free to seek its native sphere. Meanwhile, the meditations of Padre Boboli tended not a little in the direction of the old castello, though, sooth to say, it was not within the power of all his curiosity ever to lead him thither. "Ah!" thought the good padre, "could I but gain access for only one hour to the secluded apartment in which this strange doctor, I am informed, pursues his diabolical studies, then might I hope for some ray of light whereby to discover the mystery." But vain was that wish. Dr. Klindinger's was a Bluebeard chamber, into which no being but himself ever dared to enter, and which was always secured in his absence beyond the possibility of access. Had the worthy padre been able to accomplish his wishes, he might certainly have made strange discoveries. Among the multifarious papers of the physician, many speculations might be seen by which the man of orthodoxy | the dregs of misery and debasement. would have been doubtless puzzled. Here Come, then, impalpable thing!-come and were curious thoughts on the nature of mourn over thy vile habitation. It is the matter and spirit, wild and improbable to subtle torture I designed. It may be the last degree. In the fragments of an hellish, be it so-but it is revenge. Here old journal were these extravagant ideas: it lives and glows, a portion of the fiery "It is hardly possible to suppose that life tortures of mine own soul. Ah! there is and the soul are not two distinct princi- an irresistible fascination, a fatal necessity, ples; that life does not exist independently full of misery and despair, by which men of the soul, and might continue to exist are hurried on as surely as by the intensest even were it deserted by the spiritual longing of the heart after happiness and essence the soul calmly informing the rest. Strange it is that the strongest and mortal structure, yet infusing not what most ungovernable impulses of humanity, we call vitality. This last it is which instead of pleasure, involve only pain. acknowledges the might of the sharp dagger and the subtle poison. Were the connection, then, dissolved between soul and body, it is my aim to demonstrate that I, Arnold von Ebhrenstein, might still, by the grand power of that science whose worshipper I am, maintain the vital principle within that mortal frame." Other memoranda there were, evidently relating to the early life of the writerthe history of a dreadful wrong, written in words of scorching fire. There had been a tragedy, such as men talk of with pale check and faltering tongue: a woman, young and beautiful, the adored of her husband, had been the victim of unlawful passion, even in the first May morn of wedded life. Under the lurid sky of that Indian island, fate had laid upon three persons her iron grasp; there where the gorgeous flower droops and dies from the rich fulness of its own beauty, and the yellow snake coils in the rank luxuriance of the forest. Then came an hour of vengeance and of blood. But wrongs there are for which blood cannot atone, for which men would gladly follow the destroyer into the shadows of eternity. "Yes," said the record, "men say I am avenged; but well can this heart feel that for me it is no atonement-for me, over whose head the vast universe has reeled and crumbled into ruins-whom the passions of the fiery gulf have blasted with their thunder: the flame which before shot through my veins, is now become a subtle, deadly poison. I am cold-cold. Now for my purpose, be thou my handmaid, great goddess of science!" It rambled on again: "Am I then successful? Most meet, in sooth, is thy condition of being, O man of merciless and brutal passion! Here grovel in the dust at my feet -crawl as a serpent: thou shalt drink to Is this the end, then, of those dreams, so pure and lofty in their aim? Now, now alone, wandering through the vast solitudes of space, in that awful selfcontainment which overleaps forever the bounding-line of mortality." But out of this chaos of faded and crumpled manuscripts, it would, however, have been rather a difficult task even for the prying eyes of Father Boboli to put together an intelligible or connected story; it would scarcely have done more than to whet his curiosity to a very acute point, and fill his mind with ideas of vague horror. Better far for the worthy padre that his hand should never grasp those evidences of an overwrought and unhappy nature. It was late one autumn night when Dr. Klindinger retired to his antiquated sleeping-apartment, lit only by a single lamp. Pacing up and down, the physician found himself suddenly standing opposite a huge, half-dimmed mirror, with a curious frame of arabesque devices, where his figure was fully reflected; while, at the same time, it was reproduced upon the opposite wall in dark and gigantic shadow. The sight seemed to call up a disagreeable sensation, for the gazer turned away with a shrinking and uneasy gesture. There was something indescribably spectral in the aspect of that triad group-those hollow, flashing eyes, that bloodless cheek and lip, appearing with awful fidelity in the dim and silent mirror, the faint outline on the floor and wall imaging forth more appropriately still this idea of impalpable spirit; so the three figures stood, until there might have well risen up in the mind of the physician a strange confusion of ideas regarding the identity of the elusive and impalpable ego, Then his thoughts wound on and on; and he, the man of intellect and science, who had delved and wandered through all the |