The Brothers of Gdsckenen. 155 



hysterical convulsion, and, suddenly covering his eyes with his fin- 

 gers, he burst into an agony of grief. It was terrible. 1 had often 

 seen the death-bed of the dying sinner, but never aught that told so 

 plainly the despair of the self-doomed soul as the low horrified moan 

 and the convulsive sobs that rent the frame of the poor wretch beside 

 me. It is in moments such as these, my young friend, that we feel 

 the deep responsibility of the duties we have taken upon us to dis- 

 charge ; and ashamed am I to confess, that on the occasion of which I 

 speak I had reason to mourn over the weakness of this sinful flesh. 

 The sudden declaration of a crime so fearful, and the dreadful out 

 break of the accumulated remorse of fifty years, did, I grieve to say 

 it, deprive me of the power of so arranging my thoughts, as to enable 

 me to reflect on the course I should pursue. I was bewildered between 

 my feelings of horror for the crime, and compassion for the sinner ; 

 and I fear in the words which I endeavoured to address to the peni- 

 tent there were[mingled incoherently denunciations of his guilt with the 

 consolations to the repentant which our holy religion affords. As I 

 spoke, however, he gradually grew more calm ; the convulsive agony 

 of grief by which he was wrung partially ceased. I spoke of the ef- 

 ficacy of repentance, of the intercession of the holy virgin, of the 

 power of the church to [absolve those who truly repent of their 

 offences ; and I reminded him that the gates of Paradise were closed 

 irrevocably only against the perpetrators of the one great mysterious 

 sin. 



" ' Listen to me,' he said at last, * I have not yet told you all. I 

 could not tell, had I the tongue of a fiend to describe his torments, I 

 could not tell all that I have since suffered. His face is before me 

 now ; his white up-turned eyeballs, and his limbs quivering in their 

 last agony, as, sitting on the snow, I clasped the bleeding head to my 

 bosom, kissing his livid lips, and shrieking Oh, my God ! on him 

 who heard me not. Methinks I can remember night coming, and 

 then day coming and going, and I still there still there, with my 

 murdered brother on my knee. I think there was a storm too. I 

 think I can remember the snow beating thick against my face while 

 he grew stiff and cold, and the lightning calling him forth to my 

 sight out of the pitchy darkness all white and ghastly with that fear- 

 ful mark upon his brow. I know hot when or how I left the spot. I 

 must have laid him in the fresh snow up there, beyond yon white 

 summit, that since has been to me the ever-present monument of him 

 I slew. It is long since now ; but never has there passed one single 

 instant, that he has not been present. Waking or in my dreams there 

 I see him. Wrinkle by wrinkle has been engraven on my cheek, but 

 these eyes in every thing on which they look have since seen' nothing 

 but his face in all its manly comeliness. Aye, in the night, when the 

 moonlight fell upon her sleeping face, as I leant over her, I have 

 gazed and gazed, until it seemed to rne to put on a ghastly likeness to 

 my poor dying Franz. I knew it was madness, and I closed my eyes 

 and pressed my hand upon them, till they flashed fire ; yet still he 

 was there and I have gone to the porch and sat in the chill moon- 

 light, till day dawned and the vision had departed. Day after day 

 have I wandered over the Rhone Gletscher and among- the snows of 



