On the night of the fourth day, the stables
of the castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire; and the
unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the
incendiary to the already hideous list of the Baron's misdemeanors and
enormities.
But during the tumult occasioned by this occurrence, the young
nobleman himself sat apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and
desolate upper apartment of the family palace of Metzengerstein. The
rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the
walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand
illustrious ancestors. Here, rich-ermined priests, and pontifical
dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign,
put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or restrained with the
fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the Arch-enemy.
There, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein- their
muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen
foes- startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression;
and here, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of
days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the
strains of imaginary melody.
But as the Baron listened, or affected to listen, to the gradually
increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing- or perhaps pondered
upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity- his eyes
became unwittingly rivetted to the figure of an enormous, and
unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to
a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival.
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