Chapter 252

AND OTHER STORIES 239 Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of age. His father, the Minister G , died young. His mother, the Lady Mary, followed him quickly. Frederick was at that time in his eighteenth year. In a city eighteen years are no long period: but; in a wilderness — in so magnificent a wilderness as that old principality — the pendulum vibrates with a deeper meaning. From some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his father, the young Baron, at the decease of the former, entered immediately upon his vast possessions. Such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the “Palace Metzengerstein/' The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined, but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles. Upon the succession of a proprietor so young, with a character so well known, to a fortune so unparalleled, little speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. And indeed for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-Heroded Herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful debaucheries — flagrant treacheries — unheard-of atrocities — gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part — no punctilios of conscience on his own — were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty Caligula. 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