t that time, in his
fifteenth year. In a city, fifteen years are no long period--a child
may be still a child in his third lustrum: but in a wilderness--in so
magnificent a wilderness as that old principality, fifteen years have a
far 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 "Chateau 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 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