In a Glass Darkly J. Sheridan Le Fanu (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

and lowered my ear.

The man with the black wand closed the curtains, and whispered, slowly and distinctly, these words, which, I need scarcely tell you, I instantly recognized:

“I may never see you more; and, oh! that I could forget you! go⁠—farewell⁠—for God’s sake, go!”

I started as I heard them. They were, you know, the last words whispered to me by the Countess.

Good Heaven! How miraculous! Words heard, most assuredly, by no ear on earth but my own and the lady’s who uttered them, till now!

I looked at the impassive face of the spokesman with the wand. There was no trace of meaning, or even of a consciousness that the words he had uttered could possibly interest me.

“What do I most long for?” I asked, scarcely knowing what I said.

“Paradise.”

“And what prevents my reaching it?”

“A black veil.”

Stronger and stronger! The answers seemed to me to indicate the minutest acquaintance with every detail of my little romance, of which not even the Marquis knew anything! And I, the questioner, masked and robed so that my own brother could not have known me!

“You said I loved someone. Am I loved in return?” I asked.

“Try.”

I was speaking lower than before, and stood near the dark man with the beard, to prevent the necessity of his speaking in a loud key.

“Does anyone love me?” I repeated.

“Secretly,” was the answer.

“Much or little?” I inquired.

“Too well.”

“How long will that love last?”

“Till the rose casts its leaves.”

“The rose⁠—another allusion!”

“Then⁠—darkness!” I sighed. “But till then I live in light.”

“The light of violet eyes.”

Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had just pronounced it, is, at least, a superstition. How it exalts the imagination! How it enervates the reason! How credulous it makes us!

All this which, in the case of another, I should have laughed at, most powerfully affected me in my own. It inflamed my ardour, and half crazed my brain, and even influenced my conduct.

The spokesman of this wonderful trick⁠—if trick it were⁠—now waved me backward with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes still fixed upon the group, by this time encircled with an aura of mystery in my fancy; backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw him raise his hand suddenly, with a gesture of command, as a signal to the usher who carried the golden wand in front.

The usher struck his wand on the ground, and, in a shrill voice, proclaimed; “The great Confu is silent for an hour.”

Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort of blind of bamboo, which descended with a sharp clatter, and secured it at the bottom; and then the man in the tall fez, with the black beard and wand, began a sort of dervish dance. In this the men with the gold wands joined, and finally, in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the centre of the circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little, quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a mill-wheel, and amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange performers mingled with the crowd, and the exhibition, for the time at least, ended.

The Marquis d’Harmonville was standing not far away, looking on the ground, as one could judge by his attitude and musing. I approached, and he said:

“The Count has just gone away to look for his wife. It is a pity she was not here to consult the prophet; it would have been amusing, I daresay, to see how the Count bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have asked him to introduce you.”

With a beating heart, I accompanied the Marquis d’Harmonville.

XIV Mademoiselle de la Vallière

We wandered through the salons, the Marquis and I. It was no easy matter to find a friend in rooms so crowded.

“Stay here,” said the Marquis, “I have thought of a way of finding him. Besides, his jealousy may have warned him that there is no particular advantage to be gained by presenting you to his wife, I had better go and reason with him; as you seem to wish an introduction so very much.”

This occurred in the room that is now called the “Salon d’Apollon.” The paintings remained in my memory, and my adventure of that evening was destined to occur there.

I sat down upon a sofa; and looked about me. Three or four persons beside myself were seated on this roomy piece of gilded furniture. They were chatting all very gaily; all⁠—except the person who sat next me, and she was a lady. Hardly two feet interposed between us. The lady sat apparently in a reverie. Nothing could be more graceful. She wore the costume perpetuated in Collignan’s full-length portrait of Mademoiselle de la Vallière. It is, as you know, not only rich, but elegant. Her hair was powdered, but one could perceive that it was naturally a dark brown. One pretty little foot appeared, and could anything be more exquisite than her hand?

It was extremely provoking that this lady wore her mask, and did not, as many did, hold it for a time in her hand.

I was convinced that she was pretty. Availing myself of the privilege of a masquerade, a microcosm in which it is impossible, except by voice and allusion, to distinguish friend from foe, I spoke⁠—

“It is not easy, Mademoiselle, to deceive me,” I began.

“So much the better for Monsieur,” answered the mask, quietly.

“I mean,” I said, determined to tell my fib, “that beauty is a gift more difficult to conceal than Mademoiselle supposes.”

“Yet Monsieur has succeeded very well,” she said in the same sweet and careless tones.

“I see the costume of this, the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Vallière, upon a form that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and I behold a mask, and yet I recognise the lady; beauty is like that precious stone in the