The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

Agnes's dungeon, and, indeed, had been the means of making her situation known to the Lutheran chief.

“The convent is suppressed with a vengeance,” says Mr. Warrington. “We end our first act with the burning of the place, the roars of triumph of the soldiery, and the outcries of the nuns. They had best go change their dresses immediately, for they will have to be court ladies in the next act—as you will see.” Here the gentlemen talked the matter over. If the piece were to be done at Drury Lane, Mrs. Pritchard would hardly like to be Lady Abbess, as she doth but appear in the first act. Miss Pritchard might make a pretty Sybilla, and Miss Gates the attendant nun. Mr. Garrick was scarce tall enough for Carpezan—though, when he is excited, nobody ever thinks of him but as big as a grenadier. Mr. Johnson owns Woodward will be a good Ulric, as he plays the Mercutio parts very gaily; and so, by one and t'other, the audience fancies the play already on the boards, and casts the characters.

In act the second, Carpezan has married Sybilla. He has enriched himself in the wars, has been ennobled by the Emperor, and lives at his castle on the Danube in state and splendour.

But, truth to say, though married, rich, and ennobled, the Lord Carpezan was not happy. It may be that in his wild life, as leader of condottieri on both sides, he had committed crimes which agitated his mind with remorse. It may be that his rough soldier-manners consorted ill with his imperious highborn bride. She led him such a life—I am narrating as it were the Warrington manuscript, which is too long to print in entire—taunting him with his low birth, his vulgar companions, whom the old soldier loved to see about him, and so forth—that there were times when he rather wished that he had never rescued this lovely, quarrelsome, wayward vixen from the oubliette out of which he fished her. After the bustle of the first act this is a quiet one, and passed chiefly in quarrelling between the Baron and Baroness Carpezan, until horns blow, and it is announced that the young King of Bohemia and Hungary is coming bunting that way.

Act III. is passed at Prague, whither his Majesty has invited Lord Carpezan and his wife, with noble offers of preferment to the latter. From Baron he shall be promoted to be Count, from Colonel he shall be General-in-Chief. His wife is the most brilliant and fascinating of all the ladies of the court—and as for Carpzoff——

“Oh, stay—I have it—I know your story, sir, now,” says Mr. Johnson. “'Tis in 'Meteranus,' in the Theatrum Universum. I read it in Oxford as a boy—Carpezanus or Carpzoff——”

“That is the fourth act,” says Mr. Warrington. In the fourth act the young King's attentions towards Sybilla grow more and more marked; but her husband, battling against his jealousy, long refuses to yield to it, until his wife's criminality is put beyond a doubt—and here he read the act, which closes with the terrible tragedy which actually happened. Being convinced of his wife's guilt, Carpezan caused the executioner who followed his regiment to slay her in her own palace. And the curtain of the act falls just after the dreadful deed is done, in a side-chamber illuminated by the moon shining through a great oriel window, under which the King comes with his lute, and plays the song which was to be the signal between him and his guilty victim.

This song (writ in the ancient style, and repeated in the piece, being sung in the third act previously at a great festival given by the King and Queen) was pronounced by Mr. Johnson to be a happy imitation of Mr. Waller's manner, and its gay repetition at the moment of guilt, murder, and horror, very much deepened the tragic gloom of the scene.

“But whatever came afterwards?” he asked. “I remember in the Theatrum, Carpezan is said to have been taken into favour again by Count Mansfield, and doubtless to have murdered other folks on the reformed side.”

Here our poet has departed from historic truth. In the fifth act of Carpezan King Louis of Hungary and Bohemia (sufficiently terror-stricken, no doubt, by the sanguinary termination of his intrigue) has received word that the Emperor Solyman is invading his Hungarian dominions. Enter two noblemen who relate how, in the council which the King held upon the news, the injured Carpezan rushed infuriated into the royal presence, broke his sword, and flung it at the King's feet—along with a glove which he dared him to wear, and which he swore he would one day claim. After that wild challenge the rebel fled from Prague, and had not since been heard of; but it was reported that he had joined the Turkish invader, assumed the turban, and was now in the camp of the Sultan, whose white tents glance across the river yonder, and against whom the King was now on his march. Then the King comes to his tent with his generals, prepares his order of battle; and dismisses them to their posts, keeping by his side an aged and faithful knight, his master of the horse, to whom he expresses his repentance for his past crimes, his esteem for his good and injured Queen, and his determination to meet the day's battle like a man.

“What is this field called?”

“Mohacz, my liege!” says the old warrior, adding the remark that “Ere set of sun, Mohacz will see a battle bravely won.”

Trumpets and alarms now sound; they are the cymbals and barbaric music of the Janissaries: we are in the Turkish camp, and yonder, surrounded by turbaned chiefs, walks the Sultan Solyman's friend, the conqueror of Rhodes, the redoubted Grand Vizier.

Who is that warrior in an Eastern habit, but with a glove in his cap? 'Tis Carpezan. Even Solyman knew his courage and ferocity as a soldier. He knows; the ordnance of the Hungarian host; in what arms King Louis is weakest: how his cavalry, of which the shock is tremendous, should be received, and inveigled into yonder morass, where certain death may await them—he prays for a command in the front, and as near as possible to the place where the traitor King Louis will engage. “'Tis well,” says the grim Vizier, “our invincible Emperor surveys the battle from yonder tower. At the end of the day, he will know how to reward your valour.” The signal-guns fire—the trumpets blow—the Turkish captains retire, vowing death to the infidel, and eternal fidelity to the Sultan.

And now the battle begins in earnest, and with those various incidents which the lover of the theatre knoweth. Christian knights and Turkish warriors clash and skirmish over the stage. Continued alarms are sounded. Troops on both sides advance and retreat. Carpezan, with his glove in his cap, and his dreadful hammer smashing all before him, rages about the field, calling for King Louis. The renegade is about to slay a warrior who faces him, but recognising young Ulric, his ex-captain, he drops the uplifted hammer, and bids him fly, and think of Carpezan. He is softened at seeing his young friend, and thinking of former times when they fought and conquered together in the cause of Protestantism. Ulric bids him to return, but of course that is now out of the question. They fight. Ulric will have it, and down he goes under the hammer. The renegade melts in sight of his wounded comrade, when who appears but King Louis, his plumes torn, his sword hacked, his shield dented with a thousand blows which he has received and delivered during the day's battle. Ha! who is this? The guilty monarch would turn away (perhaps Macbeth may have done so before), but Carpezan is on him. All his softness is gone. He rages like a fury.