Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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an infectious terror, doubled by superstition, protected it as much as it had formerly been by its basilisks, its grasshoppers, its bombards, its culverins, its thunderers, and other engines of mediæval artillery.
But, nevertheless, the Castle of the Carpathians was well worth visiting by tourists and antiquaries. Its situation on the crest of the Orgall plateau was exceptionally fine. From the upper platform of the keep, or donjon, the view extended to the farthest point of the mountains. In the rear undulated the lofty chain, so capriciously spurred, which serves as the frontier of Wallachia. In front lay the sinuous defile of the Vulkan, the only practicable route between the frontier provinces. Beyond the valley of the two Syls lay the towns of Livadzel, Lonyai, Petroseny, and Petrilla, grouped at the mouths of the shafts by which this rich coal-basin is worked. In the distance lay an admirable series of ridges, wooded to their bases, green on their flanks, barren on their summits, commanded by the rugged peaks of Retyezat and Paring. Far away beyond the valley of the Hatszeg and the course of the Maros, appeared the distant mist-clad outlines of the Alps of Central Transylvania.
Hereabouts the depression of the ground formerly formed a lake into which the two Syls flowed before they found a passage through the chain. Nowadays this depression is a coal-field with its advantages and inconveniences: the tall brick chimneys rise amid the poplars, pines, and beeches, and black fumes poison the air which once was saturated with the perfumes of fruit-trees and flowers. But at the time of our story, although industry was holding the mining district under its iron hand, nothing had been lost of the country’s wild character which was its by nature.
The Castle of the Carpathians dated from the twelfth or thirteenth century. In those days, under the rule of the chiefs or voivodes, monasteries, churches, palaces, castles were fortified with as much care as the towns and villages. Lords and peasants had to secure themselves against aggression of all kinds. This state of affairs explains why the old fortifications of the castle, its bastions and its keep, gave it the appearance of a feudal building. What architect would have built on this plateau at this height? We know not, and the bold builder is unknown, unless it was the Rouman Manoli, so gloriously sung of in Wallachian legend, and who built at Curté d’Argis the celebrated castle of Rodolphe the Black.
Whatever doubts there might be as to the architect, there were none as to the family who owned the castle. The barons of Gortz had been lords of the country from time immemorial. They were mixed up in all the wars which ensanguined the Transylvanian fields; they fought against the Hungarians, the Saxons, the Szeklers; their name figures in the “cantices” and “doines,” in which is perpetuated the memory of these disastrous times. For their motto they had the famous Wallachian proverb, Da pe maorte, “Give unto death;” and they gave; they poured out their blood for the cause of independence, the blood which came to them from the Romans their ancestors.
As we know, all their efforts of devotedness and sacrifice ended only in reducing the descendants of this valiant race to the most unworthy oppression. It no longer exists politically. Three heels have crushed it. But these Wallachians of Transylvania have not despaired of shaking off the yoke. The future belongs to them, and it is with unshakable confidence that they repeat these words in which are concentrated all their aspirations: “Roman no péré!” (the Rouman does not know how to perish).
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the last representative of the lords of Gortz was Baron Rodolphe. Born at the Castle of the Carpathians, he had seen the family die away around him in the early years of his youth. When he was twenty-two years old he found himself alone in the world. His people had fallen off year by year, like the branches of the old beech-tree with which popular superstition associated the very existence of the castle. Without relatives, we might even say without friends, what could Baron Rodolphe do to occupy the leisure of this monotonous solitude that death had made around him? What were his tastes, his instincts, his aptitudes? It would not have been easy to discover any beyond an irresistible passion for music, particularly for the singing of the great artistes of the period. And so, after having entrusted the castle, then much dilapidated, to the care of a few old servants, he one day disappeared.
And, as was discovered later on, he had devoted his wealth, which was considerable, to visiting the chief lyrical centres of Europe, the theatres of Germany, France, and Italy, where he could indulge himself in his insatiable dilettante fancies. Was he an oddity, or a madman? The strangeness of his life led people to suppose so.
But the remembrance of his country was deeply engraven on the heart of the young lord of Gortz. In his distant wanderings he had not forgotten his Transylvanian birthplace. And he had returned to take part in one of the sanguinary revolts of the Roumanian peasantry against Hungarian oppression.
The descendants of the ancient Dacians were conquered, and their territory shared among the conquerors.
It was in consequence of this defeat that Baron Rodolphe finally left the Castle of the Carpathians, certain parts of which had already fallen into ruin. Death soon deprived the castle of its last servants and it was totally deserted. As to the Baron de Gortz, the report went that he had patriotically associated himself with the famous Rosza Sandor, an old highwayman, whom the war of independence had made a dramatic hero. Happily for him, at the close of the struggle Rodolphe de Gortz had separated from the band of the “betyar,” and he had done wisely, for the old brigand had again become a robber, and ended by falling into the hands of the police, who shut him up in the prison of Szamos-Uyvar.
Nevertheless, another version was generally believed in in the country, to the effect that Baron Rodolphe had been killed during an encounter between Rosza Sandor and the custom-house officers on the frontier. This was not so, although the Baron de Gortz had never appeared at the castle since that time, and his death was generally taken for granted. But it is wise not to accept without considerable reserve the gossip of this credulous people.
A castle deserted, haunted, and mysterious. A vivid and ardent imagination had soon peopled it with phantoms; ghosts appeared in it, and spirits returned to it at all hours of the night. Such opinions are still common in certain superstitious countries of Europe, and Transylvania is one of the most superstitious.
Besides, how could the village of Werst put off its belief in the supernatural? The pope and the school master, the one charged with the education of the faithful, the other charged with the education of the children, taught their fables as openly as if they believed in them thoroughly. They affirmed, and even produced “corroborative evidence” that were-wolves prowled about the country; that vampires known as stryges, because they shrieked like stryges, quenched their thirst on human blood; that “staffii” lurked about ruins and became vindictive if something to eat and drink were not left for them every night. There were fairies, “babes” who should not be met with on Thursdays or Fridays, the two worst days in the week. In the depths of the forests, those enchanted forests, there wandered the “balauri,” those gigantic dragons whose jaws gape up to the clouds, the “zmei” with vast wings, who carry away the daughters of the royal blood, and even those of meaner lineage when they are pretty! Here, it would seem, were a number of formidable monsters, and what is the good genius opposed to them in the popular imagination? Simply the “serpi de casa,” the snake of the fireside, which lives at the back of the hearth, and whose healthy influence the peasant purchases by feeding him with the best milk.
If ever a castle was a fitting refuge for the creatures of this Roumanian mythology, was it not the Castle of the Carpathians? On that isolated plateau, inaccessible except from the left of Vulkan Hill, there could be no doubt that there lived dragons and fairies and stryges, and probably a few ghosts of the family of the barons of Gortz. And so it had an evil reputation, which it deserved, as they said. No one dared to visit it. It spread around it a terrible epidemic as an unhealthy marsh gives forth its pestilential emanations. Nothing could approach it within a quarter of a mile without risking its life in this world and its salvation in the next. At least so it was taught in the school of Magister Hermod.
But at the same time this state of things was to end eventually, and that as soon as no stone remained of the ancient stronghold of the barons of Gortz. And here it was that the legend came in.
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