The bees sang to me all through the bright summer; the winds caressed me in the hours of sultriness; the Spirit of the Dew filled my white cup by night. Great plants, with leaves broader than the ears of elephants, overshadowed me as with a canopy of living emerald.
Far off I heard the river singing its mystic and everlasting hymn and the songs of a thousand birds. By night I peeped up through my satiny petals at the infinite procession of the stars; and by day I turned forever to the eye of the sun my heart of yellow gold.
Hummingbirds with jeweled breasts, flying from the Rising of the Sun, nestled near me and drank the perfumed dews left lingering in my chalice, and sang to me of the wonders of unknown lands—of black roses that grew only in the gardens of magicians and spectral lilies whose perfume is death which open their hearts only to tropical moons.
They severed the emerald thread of my life, and placed me in her hair. I did not feel the slow agony of death, like the fettered fireflies that glimmered as stars in the night-darkness of those splendid tresses. I felt the perfume of my life mingling in her blood and entering the secret chambers of her heart; and I mourned that I was but a flower.
That night we passed away together. I know not how she died. I had hoped to share her eternal sleep; but a weird wind entering through the casement rent my dead leaves asunder and scattered them in white ruin upon the pillow. Yet my ghost like a faint perfume still haunted the silent chamber and hovered about the flames of the waxen tapers.
Other flowers, not of my race, are blooming above her place of rest. It is her blood that lives in the rosiness of their petals; her breath that lends perfume to their leaves; her life that vitalizes their veins of diaphanous green. But in the wizard hours of the night, the merciful Spirit of the Dew, who mourns the death of summer day, bears me aloft and permits me to mingle with the crystal tears which fall upon her grave.
"Those theories which you call wild dreams," cried the Doctor, rising to his feet as he spoke, his features glowing with enthusiasm under the moon, "are but the mystic veils with which the eternal Isis veils her awful face. Your deep German philosophy is shallow—your modern pantheism vaguer than smoke—compared with the mighty knowledge of the East. The theories of the greatest modern thinkers were taught in India before the name of Rome was heard in the world; and our scientific researches of to-day simply confirm most ancient Oriental beliefs, which we, in our ignorance, have spoken of as dreams of madmen."
"Yes, but surely, you cannot otherwise characterize the idea of the transmigration of souls?"
"Ah! souls, souls," replied the stranger, drawing at his cigar until it glowed like a carbuncle in the night—"we have nothing to do with souls, but with facts. The metempsychosis is only the philosophic symbol of a vast natural fact, grotesque only to those who understand it not,—just as the most hideous Indian idol, diamond-eyed and skull-chapleted, represents to the Brahmin a hidden truth incomprehensible to the people. Consciousof the eternity of Matter and Force;—knowing that the substance of whirling universes, like clay in the hands of the potter, has been and is being and will be forever fashioned into myriad shifting forms;—knowing that shapes alone are evanescent, and that each atom of our living bodies has been from the beginning and will always be, even after the mountains have melted like wax in the heat of a world's dissolution—it is impossible to regard the theory of transmigration as a mere fantasy. Each particle of our flesh has lived before our birth through millions of transmigrations more wonderful than any poet has dared to dream of; and the life-force that throbs in the heart of each one of us has throbbed for all time in the eternal metempsychosis of the universe. Each atom of our blood has doubtless circulated, before our very civilization commenced, through the veins of millions of living creatures—soaring, crawling, or dwelling in the depths of the sea; and each molecule that floats in a sunbeam has, perhaps, vibrated to the thrill of human passion. The soil under my foot has lived and loved; and Nature, refashioning the paste in her awful laboratory into new forms of being, shall make this clay to live and hope and suffer again. Dare I even whisper to you of the past transformations of the substance of the rosiest lips you have kissed, or the brightest eyes which have mirrored your look? We have lived innumerable lives in the past; we have lived in the flowers, in the birds, inthe emerald abysses of the ocean;—we have slept in the silence of solid rocks, and moved in the swells of the thunder-chanting sea;—we have been women as well as men;—we have changed our sex a thousand times like the angels of the Talmud; and we shall continue the everlasting transmigration long after the present universe has passed away and the fires of the stars have burned themselves out. Can one know these things and laugh at the theories of the East?"
"But the theory of Cycles—"
"It is not less of a solemn truth. Knowing that Force and Matter are eternal, we know also that the kaleidoscope of changing shapes must whirl forever. But as the colored particles within a kaleidoscope are limited, only a certain number of combinations may be produced. Are not the elements of eternal matter limited? If so, their combinations must also be; and as the everlasting force must forever continue to create forms, it can only repeat its work. Then, we must believe that all which has already happened must have happened before throughout all time, and will happen again at vast intervals through all eternity. It is not the first time we have sat together on the night of September 6;—we have done so in other Septembers, yet the same; and in other New Orleanses, the same yet not the same. We must have done it centrillions of times before, and will do it centrillions of times again through the æons of the future. I shallbe again as I am, yet different; I shall smoke the same cigar, yet a different one. The same chair with the same scratches on its polished back will be there for you to sit in; and we shall hold the same conversation. The same good-natured lady will bring us a bottle of wine of the same quality; and the same persons will be reunited in this quaint Creole house. Trees like these will fling their shadows on the pavement; and above us shall we again behold as now the golden swarm of worlds sparkling in the abysses of the infinite night. There will be new stars and a new universe, yet we shall know it only as we know it at this moment that centrillions of years ago we must have suffered and hoped and loved as we do in these weary years. Good-bye, friends!"
He flung the stump of his cigar among the vines, where it expired in a shower of rosy sparks; and his footsteps died away forever. NAY, not forever; for though we should see him no more in this life, shall we not see him again throughout the Cycles and the Æons? YEA, alas, forever; for even though we should see him again throughout the Cycles and the Æons, will it not be so that he always departeth under the same circumstances and at the same moment, in sæcula sæculorum?
I have lived for three thousand years; I am weary of men and of the world: this earth has become too small for such as I; this sky seems a gray vault of lead about to sink down and crush me.
There is not a silver hair in my head; the dust of thirty centuries has not dimmed my eyes. Yet I am weary of the earth.
I speak a thousand tongues; and the faces of the continents are familiar to me as the characters of a book; the heavens have unrolled themselves before mine eyes as a scroll; and the entrails of the earth have no secrets for me.
I have sought knowledge in the deepest deeps of ocean gulfs;—in the waste places where sands shift their yellow waves, with a dry and bony sound;—in the corruption of charnel houses and the hidden horrors of the catacombs;—amid the virgin snows of Dwalagiri;—in the awful labyrinths of forests untrodden by man;—in the wombs of dead volcanoes;—in lands where the surface of lake or stream is studded with the backs of hippopotami or enameled with the mail of crocodiles;—at the extremities of the world where spectral glaciers float over inky seas;—in those strange parts where no life is, where the mountainsare rent asunder by throes of primeval earthquake, and where the eyes behold only a world of parched and jagged ruin, like the Moon—of dried-up seas and river channels worn out by torrents that ceased to roll long ere the birth of man.
All the knowledge of all the centuries, all the craft and skill and cunning of man in all things—are mine, and yet more!
For Life and Death have whispered me their most ancient secrets; and all that men have vainly sought to learn has for me no mystery.
Have I not tasted all the pleasures of this petty world—pleasures that would have consumed to ashes a frame less mighty than my own?
I have built temples with the Egyptians, the princes of India, and the Cæsars; I have aided conquerors to vanquish a world; I have reveled through nights of orgiastic fury with rulers of Thebes and Babylon; I have been drunk with wine and blood!
The kingdoms of the earth and all their riches and glory have been mine.
With that lever which Archimedes desired I have uplifted empires and overthrown dynasties. Nay! like a god, I have held the world in the hollow of my hand.
All that the beauty of youth and the love of woman can give to make joyful the hearts of men, have I possessed; no Assyrian king, no Solomon, no ruler of Samarcand, no Caliph of Bagdad, no Rajah of the most eastern East, has ever loved as I; andin my myriad loves I have beheld the realization of all that human thought had conceived or human heart desired or human hand crystallized into that marble of Pentelicus called imperishable—yet less enduring than these iron limbs of mine.
And ruddy I remain like that rosy granite of Egypt on which kings carved their dreams of eternity.
But I am weary of this world!
I have attained all that I sought; I have desired nothing that I have not obtained—save that I now vainly desire and yet shall never obtain.
There is no comrade for me in all this earth; no mind that can comprehend me; no heart that can love me for what I am.
Should I utter what I know, no living creature could understand; should I write my knowledge no human brain could grasp my thought. Wearing the shape of a man, capable of doing all that man can do—yet more perfectly than man can ever do—I must live as these my frail companions, and descend to the level of their feeble minds, and imitate their puny works, though owning the wisdom of a god! How mad were those Greek dreamers who sang of gods descending to the level of humanity that they might love a woman!
In other centuries I feared to beget a son—a son to whom I might have bequeathed my own immortal youth; jealous that I was of sharing my secret with any terrestrial creature! Now the timehas past. No son of mine born in this age, of this degenerate race, could ever become a worthy companion for me. Oceans would change their beds, and new continents arise from the emerald gulfs, and new races appear upon the earth ere he could comprehend the least of my thoughts!
The future holds no pleasure in reserve for me:—I have foreseen the phases of a myriad million years. All that has been will be again:—all that will be has been before. I am solitary as one in a desert; for men have become as puppets in my eyes, and the voice of living woman hath no sweetness for my ears.
Only to the voices of the winds and of the sea do I hearken;—yet do even these weary me, for they murmured me the same music and chanted me the same hymns, among aged woods or ancient rocks, three thousand years ago!
To-night I shall have seen the moon wax and wane thirty-six thousand nine hundred times! And my eyes are weary of gazing upon its white face.
Ah! I might be willing to live on through endless years, could I but transport myself to other glittering worlds, illuminated by double suns and encircled by galaxies of huge moons!—other worlds in which I might find knowledge equal to my own, and minds worthy of my companionship—and—perhaps—women that I might love—not hollow Emptinesses, not El-women like the spectres of Scandinavian fable, and like the frail mothers ofthis puny terrestrial race, but creatures of immortal beauty worthy to create immortal children!
Alas!—there is a power mightier than my will, deeper than my knowledge—a Force "deaf as fire, blind as the night," which binds me forever to this world of men.
Must I remain like Prometheus chained to his rock in never-ceasing pain, with vitals eternally gnawed by the sharp beak of the vulture of Despair, or dissolve this glorious body of mine forever?
I might live till the sun grows dim and cold; yet am I too weary to live longer.
I shall die utterly—even as the beast dieth, even as the poorest being dieth that bears the shape of man; and leave no written thought behind that human thought can ever grasp. I shall pass away as a flying smoke, as a shadow, as a bubble in the crest of a wave in mid-ocean, as the flame of a taper blown out; and none shall ever know that which I was. This heart that has beaten unceasingly for three thousand years; these feet that have trod the soil of all parts of the earth; these hands that have moulded the destinies of nations; this brain that contains a thousandfold more wisdom than all the children of the earth ever knew, shall soon cease to be. And yet to shatter and destroy the wondrous mechanism of this brain—a brain worthy of the gods men dream of—a temple in which all the archives of terrestrial knowledge are stored!
. . . . . . . . .
The moon is up! O death-white dead world!—couldst thou too feel, how gladly wouldst thou cease thy corpselike circlings in the Night of Immensity and follow me to that darker immensity where even dreams are dead!
The waters of the Gulf were tepid in the warmth of the tropical night. A huge moon looked down upon me as I swam toward the palm-fringed beach; and looking back I saw the rigging of the vessel sharply cut against its bright face. There was no sound! The sea-ripples kissed the brown sands silently, as if afraid; faint breezes laden with odors of saffron and cinnamon and drowsy flowers came over the water;—the stars seemed vaster than in other nights;—the fires of the Southern Cross burned steadily without one diamond-twinkle;—I paused a moment in terror;—for it seemed I could hear the night breathe—in long, weird sighs. The fancy passed as quickly as it came. The ship's bells struck the first hour of the morning. I stood again on the shore where I had played as a child, and saw through the palms the pale houses of the quaint city beyond, whence I had fled with blood upon my hands twenty-seven long years before.
Was it a witch-night, that the city slumbered so deep a sleep and the sereno slept at his post as I passed? I know not, but it was well for him that he slept! I passed noiselessly as the Shadow of Death through the ancient gates, and through the shadowsflung down by the projecting balconies, and along the side of the plaza unilluminated by the gaze of the tropical moon, and where the towers of the cathedral made goblin shapes of darkness on the pavement; and along narrow ways where the star-sprinkled blue of heaven above seemed but a ribbon of azure, jagged and gashed along its edges by sharp projections of balconies; and beyond again into the white moonshine, where orange trees filled the warm air with a perfume as that of a nuptial chamber; and beyond, yet farther, where ancient cypresses with roots and branches gnarled and twisted as by the tortures of a thousand years of agony, bowed weirdly over the Place of Tombs.
Gigantic spiders spun their webs under the moon between the walls of the tombs;—vipers glided over my feet;—the vampire hovered above under the stars; and fireflies like corpse-lights circled about the resting-places of the dead. Great vines embraced the marbles green with fungus-growths;—the ivy buried its lizard feet in the stones;—lianas had woven a veil, thick as that of Isis, across the epitaphs carven above the graves. But I found HER tomb! I would have reached it, as I had sworn, even in the teeth of Death and Hell!
I tore asunder the venomous plants which clung to the marble like reptiles;—but the blood poured from my hands upon her name;—and I could not find one unreddened spot to kiss. And I heard theblood from my fingers dripping with a thick, dead sound, as of molten lead, upon the leaves of the uptorn plants at my feet.
And the dead years rose from their graves of mist and stood around me! I saw the moss-green terrace where I received her first kiss that filled my veins with madness;—the marble urns with their carved bas-reliefs of naked dancing boys;—the dead fountain choked with water-lilies;—the monstrous flowers that opened their hearts to the moon. And SHE!—the sinuous outlines of that body of Corinthian bronze unconcealed by the feathery lightness of the white robe she wore;—the Creole eyes;—the pouting and passionate mouth;—and that cruel, sphinx-smile, that smile of Egypt, eternally pitiless, eternally mystical—the smile she wore when I flung myself like a worm before her to kiss her feet, and vainly shrieked to her to trample upon me, to spit upon me! And after my fierce moment of vengeance, the smile of Egypt still remained upon her dark face, as though moulded in everlasting bronze.
There was no rustle among the lianas, no stir among the dead leaves; yet SHE stood again before me! My heart seemed to cease its beatings;—a chill as of those nights in which I had sailed Antarctic seas passed over me! Robed in white as in the buried years, with lights like fireflies in her hair,and the same dark, elfish smile! And suddenly the chill passed away with a fierce cataclysm of the blood, as though each of its cells were heated by volcanic fire;—for the strange words of the Hebrew canticle came to me like a far echo—
LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH!
I burst the fetters with which horror had chained my voice;—I spake to her; I wept—I wept tears of blood!
And the old voice came to me, argentine and low and mockingly sweet as the voices of birds that call to each other through the fervid West Indian night—
"I knew thou wouldst come back to me—howsoever long thou mightst wander under other skies and over other seas.
"Didst thou dream that I was dead? Nay, I die not so quickly! I have lived through all these years. I shall live on; and thou must return hither again to visit me like a thief in the night.
"Knowest thou how I have lived? I have lived in the bitter tears thou hast wept through all these long years;—the agony of the remorse that seized thee in silent nights and lonesome wastes;—in the breath of thy youth and life exhaled in passionate agony when no human eyes beheld thee;—in the images that haunt thy dreams and make it a horror for thee to find thyself alone! Yet wouldst thou kiss me—"
I looked upon her again in the white light;—I saw the same weirdly beautiful face, the same smile of the sphinx;—I saw the vacant tomb yawning to its entrails;—I saw its shadow—my shadow—lying sharply upon the graves;—and I saw that the tall white figure before mecast no shadow before the moon!
And suddenly under the stars, sonorous and vibrant as far cathedral bells, the voices of the awakening watchmen chanted—Ave Maria Purísima!—las tres de la mañana, y tiempo sereno!
"As surely as the wild bird seeks the summer, you will come back," she whispered. "Is there a drop of blood in your veins that does not grow ruddier and warmer at the thought of me? Does not your heart beat quicker at this moment because I am here? It belongs to me;—it obeys me in spite of your feeble will;—it will remain my slave when you are gone. You have bewitched yourself at my lips; I hold you as a bird is held by an invisible thread; and my thread, invisible and intangible, is stronger than your will. Fly: but you can no longer fly beyond the circle in which my wish confines you. Go: but I shall come to you in dreams of the night; and you will be awakened by the beating of your own heart to find yourself alone with darkness and memory. Sleep in whose arms you will, I shall come like a ghost between you; kiss a thousand lips, but it will be I that shall receive them. Though you circle the earth in your wanderings, you will never be able to leave my memory behind you; and your pulse will quicken at recollections of me whether you find yourself under Indian suns or Northern lights. You lie when you say you do not love me!—your heart would fling itself under my feet could it escape from its living prison! You will come back."
And having vainly sought rest through many vainly spent years, I returned to her. It was a night of wild winds and fleeting shadows and strange clouds that fled like phantoms before the storm and across the face of the moon. "You are a cursed witch," I shrieked, "but I have come back!"
And she, placing a finger—white as the waxen tapers that are burned at the feet of the dead—upon my lips, only smiled and whispered, "Come with me."
And I followed her.
The thunder muttered in the east; the horizon pulsated with lightnings; the night-birds screamed as we reached the iron gates of the burial-ground, which swung open with a groan at her touch.
Noiselessly she passed through the ranges of the graves; and I saw the mounds flame when her feet touched them—flame with a cold white dead flame like the fire of the glow-worm.
Was it an illusion of broken moonlight and flying clouds, or did the dead rise and follow us like a bridal train?
And was it only the vibration of the thunder, or did the earth quake when I stood uponthatgrave?
"Look not behind you even for an instant," she muttered, "or you are lost."
But there came to me a strange desire to read the name graven upon the moss-darkened stone; and even as it came the storm unveiled the face of the moon.And the dark shadow at my side whispered, "Read it not!"
And the moon veiled herself again. "I cannot go! I cannot go!" I whispered passionately, "until I have read the name upon this stone."
Then a flash of lightning in the east revealed to me the name; and an agony of memory came upon me; and I shrieked it to the flying clouds and the wan lights of heaven!
Again the earth quaked under my feet; and a white Shape rose from the bosom of the grave like an exhalation and stood before me: I felt the caress of lips shadowy as those of the fair phantom women who haunt the dreams of youth; and the echo of a dead voice, faint as the whisper of a summer wind, murmured: "Love, love is stronger than Death!—I come back from the eternal night to save thee!"
Columns of Corinthian marble stretching away in mighty perspective and rearing their acanthus capitals a hundred feet above the polished marble from which they rose;—antique mosaics from the years of Hadrian;—Pompeiian frescoes limning all the sacrifices made to Aphrodite;—naked bronzes uplifting marvelous candelabra;—fantastically beautiful oddities in terra cotta;—miracles of art in Pentelic marble;—tripods supporting vessels of burning spices which filled the palace with perfumes as intoxicating as the Song of Solomon;—and in the midst of all a range of melodious fountains amid whose waters white nymphs showed their smooth thighs of stone and curved their marble figures into all the postures that harmonize with beauty. Vast gardens of myrtle and groves of laurel, mystic and shadowy as those of Daphne, surrounded the palace with a world of deep green, broken only at intervals by the whiteness of Parian dryads;—flowers formed a living carpet upon the breadth of the terraces, and a river washed the eastern walls and marble stairways of the edifice. It was a world of wonders and of marvels, of riches and rarities, though created by the vengeance of a king. There was but one human life amid all thatenchantment of Greek marble, of petrified loveliness and beauty made motionless in bronze. No servants were ever seen;—no voice was ever heard;—there was no exit from that strange paradise. It was said that the king's prisoner was served by invisible hands;—that tables covered with luxurious viands rose up through the marble pavements at regular hours;—and the fumes of the richest wines of the Levant, sweetened with honey, perfumed the chamber chosen for his repasts. All that art could inspire, all that gold might obtain, all that the wealth of a world could create were for him—save only the sound of a human voice and the sight of a human face. To madden in the presence of unattainable loveliness, to consume his heart in wild longings to realize the ravishing myth of Pygmalion, to die of a dream of beauty—such was the sentence of the king!
Lovelier than all other lovelinesses created in stone or gem or eternal bronze by the hands of men whose lives were burnt out in longings for a living idol worthy of their dreams of perfect beauty—a figure of Aphrodite displayed the infinite harmony of her naked loveliness upon a pedestal of black marble, so broad and so highly polished that it reflected the divine poem of her body like a mirror of ebony—the Foam-born rising from the silent deeps of a black Ægean. The delicate mellowness of the antique marble admirably mocked the tint ofhuman flesh;—a tropical glow, a golden warmth seemed to fill the motionless miracle—this dream of love frozen into marble by a genius greater than Praxiteles; no modern restorer had given to the attitude of this bright divinity the Christian anachronism of shame. With arms extended as if to welcome a lover, all the exquisite curves of her bosom faced the eyes of the beholder; and with one foot slightly advanced she seemed in the act of stepping forward to bestow a kiss. And a brazen tablet let into the black marble of the pedestal bore, in five learned tongues, the strange inscription:
Created by the hand of one maddened by love, I madden all who gaze upon me. Mortal, condemned to live in solitude with me, prepare thyself to die of love at my feet. The old gods, worshiped by youth and beauty, are dead; and no immortal power can place a living heart in this stony bosom or lend to these matchless limbs the warm flexibility and rosiness of life.
Created by the hand of one maddened by love, I madden all who gaze upon me. Mortal, condemned to live in solitude with me, prepare thyself to die of love at my feet. The old gods, worshiped by youth and beauty, are dead; and no immortal power can place a living heart in this stony bosom or lend to these matchless limbs the warm flexibility and rosiness of life.
Around the chamber of the statue ran a marble wainscoting chiseled with Bacchanal bas-reliefs—a revel of rude dryads and fauns linking themselves in amorous interlacings;—upon an altar of porphyry flickered the low flame of the holy fire fed with leaves of the myrtle sacred to love;—doves for the sacrifice were cooing and wooing in the marble court without;—a sound of crystal water came from a fountain near the threshold, where beautiful feminine monsters, whose lithe flanks blended into serpent coils, upheld in their armsof bronze the fantastic cup from which the living waters leapt; a balmy, sensuous air, bearing on its wings the ghosts of perfumes known to the voluptuaries of Corinth, filled the softly lighted sanctuary;—and on either side of the threshold stood two statues, respectively in white and black marble—Love, the blond brother of Death; Death, the dark brother of Love, with torch forever extinguished.
And the King knew that the Prisoner kept alive the sacred fire, and poured out the blood of the doves at the feet of the goddess, who smiled with the eternal smile of immortal youth and changeless loveliness and the consciousness of the mighty witchery of her enchanting body. For secret watchers came to the palace and said:
"When he first beheld the awful holiness of her beauty, he fell prostrate as one bereft of life, and long so remained."
And the King musingly made answer:
"Aphrodite is no longer to be appeased with the blood of doves, but only with the blood of men—men of mighty hearts and volcanic passion. He is youthful and strong and an artist!—and he must soon die. Let the weapons of death be mercifully placed at the feet of Aphrodite, that her victim may be able to offer himself up in sacrifice."
Now the secret messengers were eunuchs. And they came again to the palace, and whispered in the ears of the silver-bearded King:
"He has again poured out the blood of the doves, and he sings the sacred Hymn of Homer, and kisses her marble body until his lips bleed;—and the goddess still smiles the smile of perfect loveliness that is pitiless."
And the King answered:
"It is even as I desire."
A second time the messengers came to the palace, and whispered in the ears of the iron-eyed King:
"He bathes her feet with his tears: his heart is tortured as though crushed by fingers of marble; he no longer eats or slumbers, neither drinks he the waters of the Fountain of Bronze;—and the goddess still smiles the mocking smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that is without pity and without mercy."
And the King answered:
"It is even as I had wished."
So one morning, in the first rosy flush of sunrise, they found the Prisoner dead, his arms madly flung about the limbs of the goddess in a last embrace, and his cheek resting upon her marble foot. All the blood of his heart, gushing from a wound in his breast, had been poured out upon the pedestal of black marble; and it trickled down over the brazen tablet inscribed with five ancient tongues, and over the mosaic pavement, and over the marble threshold past the statue of Love who is the brother of Death, and the statue of Death who is the brother of Love,until it mingled with the waters of the Fountain of Bronze from which the sacrificial doves did drink.
And around the bodies of the serpent-women the waters blushed rosily; and above the dead, the goddess still smiled the sweet and mocking smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that hath no pity.
"Thrice seven days he has lived at her feet," muttered the King; "yet even I, hoary with years, dare not trust myself to look upon her for an hour!" And a phantom of remorse, like a shadow from Erebus, passed across his face of granite. "Let her be broken in pieces," he said, "even as a vessel of glass is broken."
But the King's servants, beholding the white witchery of her rhythmic limbs, fell upon their faces; and there was no man found to raise his hand against the Medusa of beauty whose loveliness withered men's hearts as leaves are crisped by fire. And Aphrodite smiled down upon them with the smile of everlasting youth and immortal beauty and eternal mockery of human passion.
This is the tale told in the last hours of a summer night to the old Spanish priest in the Hôtel Dieu, by an aged wanderer from the Spanish Americas; and I write it almost as I heard it from the priest's lips:
This is the tale told in the last hours of a summer night to the old Spanish priest in the Hôtel Dieu, by an aged wanderer from the Spanish Americas; and I write it almost as I heard it from the priest's lips:
I could not sleep. The strange odors of the flowers; the sense of romantic excitement which fills a vivid imagination in a new land; the sight of a new heaven illuminated by unfamiliar constellations, and a new world which seemed to me a very garden of Eden—perhaps all of these added to beget the spirit of unrest which consumed me as with a fever. I rose and went out under the stars. I heard the heavy breathing of the soldiers, whose steel corselets glimmered in the ghostly light; the occasional snorting of the horses; the regular tread of the sentries guarding the sleep of their comrades. An inexplicable longing came upon me to wander alone into the deep forest beyond, such a longing as in summer days in Seville had seized me when I heard the bearded soldiers tell of the enchantment of the New World. I did not dream of danger; for in those days I feared neither God nor devil, and the Commander held me the most desperate of that desperate band of men. I strode out beyond the lines;—the grizzled sentry growled out a rough protest asI received his greeting in sullen silence;—I cursed him and passed on.
. . . . . . . . .
The deep sapphire of that marvelous Southern night paled to pale amethyst; then the horizon brightened into yellow behind the crests of the palm trees; and at last the diamond-fires of the Southern Cross faded out. Far behind me I heard the Spanish bugles, ringing their call through the odorous air of that tropical morning, quaveringly sweet in the distance, faint as music from another world. Yet I did not dream of retracing my steps. As in a dream I wandered on under the same strange impulse, and the bugle-call again rang out, but fainter than before. I do not know if it was the strange perfume of the strange flowers, or the odors of the spice-bearing trees, or the caressing warmth of the tropical air, or witchcraft; but a new sense of feeling came to me. I would have given worlds to have been able to weep: I felt the old fierceness die out of my heart;—wild doves flew down from the trees and perched upon my shoulders, and I laughed to find myself caressing them—I whose hands were red with blood, and whose heart was black with crime.
. . . . . . . . .
And the day broadened and brightened into a paradise of emerald and gold; birds no larger than bees, but painted with strange metallic fires of color, hummed about me;—parrots chattered inthe trees;—apes swung themselves with fantastic agility from branch to branch;—a million million blossoms of inexpressible beauty opened their silky hearts to the sun;—and the drowsy perfume of the dreamy woods became more intoxicating. It seemed to me a land of witchcraft, such as the Moors told us of in Spain, when they spoke of countries lying near the rising of the sun. And it came to pass that I found myself dreaming of the Fountain of Gold which Ponce de Leon sought.
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Then it seemed to me that the trees became loftier. The palms looked older than the deluge, and their cacique-plumes seemed to touch the azure of heaven. And suddenly I found myself within a great clear space, ringed in by the primeval trees so lofty that all within their circle was bathed in verdant shadow. The ground was carpeted with moss and odorous herbs and flowers, so thickly growing that the foot made no sound upon their elastic leaves and petals; and from the circle of the trees on every side the land sloped down to a vast basin filled with sparkling water, and there was a lofty jet in the midst of the basin, such as I had seen in the Moorish courts of Granada. The water was deep and clear as the eyes of a woman in her first hours of love;—I saw gold-sprinkled sands far below, and rainbow lights where the rain of the fountain made ripples. It seemed strange to me that the jet leaped from nothing formed by thehand of man; it was as though a mighty underflow forced it upward in a gush above the bright level of the basin. I unbuckled my armor and doffed my clothing, and plunged into the fountain with delight. It was far deeper than I expected; the crystalline purity of the water had deceived me—I could not even dive to the bottom. I swam over to the fountain jet and found to my astonishment that while the waters of the basin were cool as the flow of a mountain spring, the leaping column of living crystal in its centre was warm as blood!
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I felt an inexpressible exhilaration from my strange bath; I gamboled in the water like a boy; I even cried aloud to the woods and the birds; and the parrots shouted back my cries from the heights of the palms. And, leaving the fountain, I felt no fatigue or hunger; but when I lay down a deep and leaden sleep came upon me,—such a sleep as a child sleeps in the arms of its mother.
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When I awoke a woman was bending over me. She was wholly unclad, and with her perfect beauty and the tropical tint of her skin, she looked like a statue of amber. Her flowing black hair was interwoven with white flowers; her eyes were very large, and dark and deep, and fringed with silky lashes. She wore no ornaments of gold, like the Indian girls I had seen—only the white flowers in her hair. I looked at her wonderingly as upon an angel; andwith her tall and slender grace she seemed to me, indeed, of another world. For the first time in all that dark life of mine, I felt fear in the presence of a woman; but a fear not unmixed with pleasure. I spoke to her in Spanish; but she only opened her dark eyes more widely, and smiled. I made signs; she brought me fruits and clear water in a gourd; and as she bent over me again, I kissed her.
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Why should I tell of our love, Padre?—let me only say that those were the happiest years of my life. Earth and heaven seemed to have embraced in that strange land; it was Eden; it was paradise; never-wearying love, eternal youth! No other mortal ever knew such happiness as I;—yet none ever suffered so agonizing a loss. We lived upon fruits and the water of the Fountain;—our bed was the moss and the flowers; the doves were our playmates;—the stars our lamps. Never storm or cloud;—never rain or heat;—only the tepid summer drowsy with sweet odors, the songs of birds and murmuring water; the waving palms, the jewel-breasted minstrels of the woods who chanted to us through the night. And we never left the little valley. My armor and my good rapier rusted away; my garments were soon worn out; but there we needed no raiment, it was all warmth and light and repose. "We shall never grow old here," she whispered. But when I asked her if that was, indeed, the Fountain of Youth, she only smiled and placed herfinger upon her lips. Neither could I ever learn her name. I could not acquire her tongue; yet she had learned mine with marvelous quickness. We never had a quarrel;—I could never find heart to even frown upon her. She was all gentleness, playfulness, loveliness—but what do you care, Padre, to hear all these things?
. . . . . . . . .
Did I say our happiness was perfect? No: there was one strange cause of anxiety which regularly troubled me. Each night, while lying in her arms, I heard the Spanish bugle-call—far and faint and ghostly as a voice from the dead. It seemed like a melancholy voice calling to me. And whenever the sound floated to us, I felt that she trembled, and wound her arms faster about me, and she would weep until I kissed away her tears. And through all those years I heard the bugle-call. Did I say years?—nay,centuries!—for in that land one never grows old; I heard it through centuries after all my companions were dead.
The priest crossed himself under the lamplight, and murmured a prayer. "Continue, hijo mio," he said at last; "tell me all."
The priest crossed himself under the lamplight, and murmured a prayer. "Continue, hijo mio," he said at last; "tell me all."
It was anger, Padre; I wished to see for myself where the sounds came from that tortured my life. And I know not why she slept so deeply that night. As I bent over to kiss her, she moaned in her dreams, and I saw a crystal tear glimmer on the dark fringe of her eyes—and then that cursed bugle-call—
The old man's voice failed a moment. He gave a feeble cough, spat blood, and went on:
The old man's voice failed a moment. He gave a feeble cough, spat blood, and went on:
I have little time to tell you more, Padre. I never could find my way back again to the valley. I lost her forever. When I wandered out among men, they spoke another language that I could not speak; and the world was changed. When I met Spaniards at last, they spoke a tongue unlike what I heard in my youth. I did not dare to tell my story. They would have confined me with madmen. I speak the Spanish of other centuries; and the men of my own nation mock my quaint ways. Had I lived much in this new world of yours, I should have been regarded as mad, for my thoughts and ways are not of to-day; but I have spent my life among the swamps of the tropics, with the python and the cayman, in the heart of untrodden forests and by the shores of rivers that have no names, and the ruins of dead Indian cities,—until my strength died and my hair became white in looking for her.
"My son," cried the old priest, "banish these evil thoughts. I have heard your story; and any, save a priest, would believe you mad. I believe all you have told me;—the legends of the Church contain much that is equally strange. You have been a great sinner in your youth; and God has punished you by making your sins the very instrument of your punishment. Yet has He not preserved you through the centuries that you might repent? Banish all thoughts of the demon who still tempts you in the shape of a woman; repent and commend your soul to God, that I may absolve you.""Repent!" said the dying man, fixing upon the priest's face his great black eyes, which flamed up again as with the fierce fires of his youth; "repent, father? I cannot repent! I love her!—I love her! And if there be a life beyond death, I shall love her through all time and eternity: more than my own soul I love her!—more than my hope of heaven!—more than my fear of death and hell!"The priest fell on his knees, and, covering his face, prayed fervently. When he lifted his eyes again, the soul had passed away unabsolved; but there was such a smile upon the dead face that the priest wondered, and, forgetting the Miserere upon his lips, involuntarily muttered: "He hath found Her at last." And the east brightened; and touched by the magic of the rising sun, the mists above his rising formed themselves into a Fountain of Gold.
"My son," cried the old priest, "banish these evil thoughts. I have heard your story; and any, save a priest, would believe you mad. I believe all you have told me;—the legends of the Church contain much that is equally strange. You have been a great sinner in your youth; and God has punished you by making your sins the very instrument of your punishment. Yet has He not preserved you through the centuries that you might repent? Banish all thoughts of the demon who still tempts you in the shape of a woman; repent and commend your soul to God, that I may absolve you."
"Repent!" said the dying man, fixing upon the priest's face his great black eyes, which flamed up again as with the fierce fires of his youth; "repent, father? I cannot repent! I love her!—I love her! And if there be a life beyond death, I shall love her through all time and eternity: more than my own soul I love her!—more than my hope of heaven!—more than my fear of death and hell!"
The priest fell on his knees, and, covering his face, prayed fervently. When he lifted his eyes again, the soul had passed away unabsolved; but there was such a smile upon the dead face that the priest wondered, and, forgetting the Miserere upon his lips, involuntarily muttered: "He hath found Her at last." And the east brightened; and touched by the magic of the rising sun, the mists above his rising formed themselves into a Fountain of Gold.
He knew no rest; for all his dreams were haunted by her; and when he sought love, she came as the dead come between the living. So that, weary of his life, he passed away at last in the fevered summer of a tropical city; dying with her name upon his lips. And his face was no more seen in the palm-shadowed streets; but the sun rose and sank as before.
And that vague phantom life, which sometimes lives and thinks in the tomb where the body moulders, lingered and thought within the narrow marble bed where they laid him with the pious hope—que en paz descanse!
Yet so weary of his life had the wanderer been that he could not even find the repose of the dead. And while the body sank into dust the phantom man found no rest in the darkness, and thought to himself, "I am even too weary to rest!"
There was a fissure in the wall of the tomb. And through it, and through the meshes of the web that a spider had spun across it, the dead looked, and saw the summer sky blazing like amethyst; the palms swaying in the breezes from the sea; the flowers in the shadows of the sepulchres; the opal fires of the horizon; the birds that sang, and theriver that rolled its whispering waves between tall palms and vast-leaved plants to the heaving emerald of the Spanish Main. The voices of women and sounds of argentine laughter and of footsteps and of music, and of merriment, also came through the fissure in the wall of the tomb; sometimes also the noise of the swift feet of horses, and afar off the drowsy murmur made by the toiling heart of the city. So that the dead wished to live again; seeing that there was no rest in the tomb.
And the gold-born days died in golden fire;—and the moon whitened nightly the face of the earth; and the perfume of the summer passed away like a breath of incense;—but the dead in the sepulchre could not wholly die.
The voices of life entered his resting-place; the murmur of the world spoke to him in the darkness; the winds of the sea called to him through the crannies of the tomb. So that he could not rest. And yet for the dead there is no consolation of tears!
The stars in their silent courses looked down through the crannies of the tomb and passed on; the birds sang above him and flew to other lands; the lizards ran noiselessly above his bed of stone and as noiselessly departed; the spider at last ceased to renew her web of magical silk; the years came and went as before, but for the dead there was no rest!
And it came to pass that after many tropical moons had waxed and waned, and the summer was come, with a presence sweet as a fair woman's—making the drowsy air odorous about her—that she whose name was uttered by his lips when the Shadow of Death fell upon him, came to that city of palms, and to the ancient place of burial, and even to the tomb that was nameless.
And he knew the whisper of her robes; and from the heart of the dead man a flower sprang and passed through the fissure in the wall of the tomb and blossomed before her and breathed out its soul in passionate sweetness.
But she, knowing it not, passed by; and the sound of her footsteps died away forever!
"Come with me," he said, "that you may see the contrast between poverty and riches, between the great and the humble, even among the ranks of the dead;—for verily it hath been said that there are sermons in stones."
And I passed with him through the Egyptian gates, and beyond the pylons into the Alley of Cypresses; and he showed me the dwelling-place of the rich in the City of Eternal Sleep—the ponderous tombs of carven marble, the white angels that mourned in stone, the pale symbols of the urns, and the names inscribed upon tablets of granite in letters of gold. But I said to him: "These things interest me not;—these tombs are but traditions of the wealth once owned by men who dwell now where riches avail nothing and all rest together in the dust."
Then my friend laughed softly to himself, and taking my hand led me to a shadowy place where the trees bent under their drooping burdens of gray moss, and made waving silhouettes against the catacombed walls which girdle the cemetery. There the dead were numbered and piled away thickly upon the marble shelves, like those documents which none may destroy but which few care to read—the Archives of our Necropolis. And hepointed to a marble tablet closing the aperture of one of the little compartments in the lowest range of the catacombs, almost level with the grass at our feet.
There was no inscription, no name, no wreath, no vase. But some hand had fashioned a tiny flower-bed in front of the tablet—a little garden about twelve inches in width and depth—and had hemmed it about with a border of pink-tinted seashells, and had covered the black mould over with white sand, through which the green leaves and buds of the baby plants sprouted up.
"Nothing but love could have created that," said my companion, as a shadow of tenderness passed over his face;—"and that sand has been brought here from a long distance, and from the shores of the sea."
Then I looked and remembered wastes that I had seen, where sand-waves shifted with a dry and rustling sound, where no life was and no leaf grew, where all was death and barrenness. And here were flowers blooming in the midst of sand!—the desert blossoming!—love living in the midst of death! And I saw the print of a hand, a child's hand—the tiny Angers that had made this poor little garden and smoothed the sand over the roots of the flowers.
"There is no name upon the tomb," said the voice of the friend who stood beside me; "yet why should there be?"
Why, indeed? I answered. Why should the world know the sweet secret of that child's love? Whyshould unsympathetic eyes read the legend of that grief? Is it not enough that those who loved the dead man know his place of rest, and come hither to whisper to him in his dreamless sleep?
I saidhe; for somehow or other the sight of that little garden created a strange fancy in my mind, a fancy concerning the dead. The shells and the sand were not the same as those usually used in the cemeteries. They had been brought from a great distance—from the moaning shores of the Mexican Gulf.
So that visions of a phantom sea arose before me; and mystic ships rocking in their agony upon shadowy waves;—and dreams of wild coasts where the weed-grown skeletons of wrecks lie buried in the ribbed sand.
And I thought—Perhaps this was a sailor and perhaps the loving ones who come at intervals to visit his place of rest waited and watched and wept for a ship that never came back.
But when the sea gave up its dead, they bore him to his native city, and laid him in this humble grave, and brought hither the sand that the waves had kissed, and the pink-eared shells within whose secret spirals the moan of ocean lingers forever.
And from time to time his child comes to plant a frail blossom, and smooth the sand with her tiny fingers, talking softly the while—perhaps only to herself—perhaps to that dead father who comes to her in dreams.
To Thebes, the giant city of a hundred gates, the city walled up to heaven, come the tidings of war from the south. Dark Ethiopia has risen against Egypt, the power "shadowing with wings" has invaded the kingdom of the Pharaohs, to rescue from captivity the beautiful Aïda, daughter of Amonasro, monarch of Ethiopia. Aïda is the slave of the enchanting Amneris, daughter of Pharaoh. Radames, chief among the great captains of Egypt, is beloved by Amneris; but he has looked upon the beauty of the slave-maiden, and told her in secret the story of his love.
And Radames, wandering through the vastness of Pharoah's palace, dreams of Aïda, and longs for power. Visions of grandeur tower before him like the colossi of Osiris in the temple courts; hopes and fears agitate his soul, as varying winds from desert or sea bend the crests of the dhoums to the four points of heaven. In fancy he finds himself seated at the king's right hand, clad with the robes of honor, and wearing the ring of might; second only to the most powerful of the Pharaohs. He lifts Aïda to share his greatness; he binds her brows with gold, and restores her to the land of her people. And evenas he dreams, Ramphis, the deep-voiced priest, draws nigh, bearing the tidings of war and of battle-thunder rolling up from the land "shadowing with wings," which is beyond the river of Ethiopia. The priest has consulted with the Veiled Goddess—Isis, whose awful face no man may see and live. And the Veiled One has chosen the great captain who shall lead the hosts of Egypt. "O happy man!—would that it were I!" cries Radames. But the priest utters not the name, and passes down the avenue of mighty pillars, and out into the day beyond.
Amneris, the daughter of Pharaoh, speaks words of love to Radames. His lips answer, but his heart is cold. And the subtle mind of the Egyptian maiden divines the fatal secret. Shall she hate her slave?
The priests summon the people of Egypt together; the will of the goddess is made manifest by the lips of Pharaoh himself. Radames shall lead the hosts of Egypt against the dark armies of Ethiopia. A roar of acclamation goes up to heaven. Aïda fears and weeps; it is against her beloved father, Amonasro, that her lover must lead the armies of the Nile. Radames is summoned to the mysterious halls of the Temple of Phthah: through infinitely extending rows of columns illumined by holy flames he is led to the inner sanctuary itself. The linen-mantled priest performs the measure of their ancient andsymbolic dance; the warriors clad in consecrated armor; about his loins is girt a sacred sword; and the vast temple reëchoes through all its deeps of dimness the harmonies of the awful hymn to the Eternal Spirit of Fire.
The ceremony is consummated.
The monarch proclaims tremendous war. Thebes opens her hundred mouths of brass and vomits forth her nations of armies. The land shakes to the earthquake of the chariot-roll; numberless as ears of corn are the spear-blades of bronze;—the jaws of Egypt have opened to devour her enemies!
Aïda has confessed her love in agony; Amneris has falsely told her that her lover has fallen in battle. And the daughter of Pharaoh is strong and jealous.
As the white moon moves around the earth, as the stars circle in Egypt's rainless heaven, so circle the dancing-girls in voluptuous joy before the king—gauze-robed or clad only with jeweled girdles;—their limbs, supple as the serpents charmed by the serpent charmer, curve to the music of harpers harping upon fantastic harps. The earth quakes again; there is a sound in the distance as when a mighty tide approaches the land—a sound as of the thunder-chanting sea. The hosts of Egypt return. The chariots roar through the hundred gates of Thebes. Innumerable armies defile before the granite terraces of the Palace. Radames comesin the glory of his victory. Pharaoh descends from his throne to embrace him. "Ask what thou wilt, O Radames, even though it be the half of my kingdom!"
And Radames asks for the life of his captives. Amonasro is among them; and Aïda, beholding him, fears with an exceeding great fear. Yet none but she knows Amonasro; for he wears the garb of a soldier—none but she, and Radames. The priests cry for blood. But the king must keep his vow. The prisoners are set free. And Radames must wed the tall and comely Amneris, Pharaoh's only daughter.
It is night over Egypt. To Ramphis, the deep-voiced priest, tall Amneris must go. It is the eve of her nuptials. She must pray to the Veiled One, the mystic mother of love, to bless her happy union. Within the temple burn the holy lights; incense smoulders in the tripods of brass; solemn hymns resound through the vast-pillared sanctuary. Without, under the stars, Aïda glides like a shadow to meet her lover.
It is not her lover who comes. It is her father! "Aïda," mutters the deep but tender voice of Amonasro, "thou hast the daughter of Pharaoh in thy power! Radames loves thee! Wilt thou see again the blessed land of thy birth?—Wit thou inhale the balm of our forests?—Wilt thou gazeupon our valleys and behold our temples of gold, and pray to the gods of thy fathers? Then it will only be needful for thee to learn what path the Egyptians will follow! Our people have risen in arms again! Radames loves thee!—he will tell thee all! What! dost thou hesitate? Refuse!—and they who died to free thee from captivity shall arise from the black gulf to curse thee! Refuse!—and the shade of thy mother will return from the tomb to curse thee! Refuse!—and I, thy father, shall disown thee and invoke upon thy head my everlasting curse!"
Radames comes! Amonasro, hiding in the shadow of the palms, hears all. Radames betrays his country to Aïda. "Save thyself!—fly with me!" she whispers to her lover. "Leave thy gods; we shall worship together in the temples of my country. The desert shall be our nuptial couch!—the silent stars the witness of our love. Let my black hair cover thee as a tent; my eyes sustain thee; my kisses console thee." And as she twines about him and he inhales the perfume of her lips and feels the beating of her heart, Radames forgets country and honor and faith and fame; and the fatal word is spoken. Napata!—Amonasro, from the shadows of the palm-trees, shouts the word in triumph! There is a clash of brazen blades; Radames is seized by priests and soldiers: Amonasro and his daughter fly under cover of the night.
Vainly tall Amneris intercedes with the deep-voiced priest. Ramphis has spoken the word: "He shall die!" Vainly do the priests call upon Radames to defend himself against their terrible accusations. His lips are silent. He must die the death of traitors. They sentence him to living burial under the foundations of the temple, under the feet of the granite gods.
Under the feet of the deities they have made the tomb of Radames—a chasm wrought in a mountain of hewn granite. Above it the weird-faced gods with beards of basalt have sat for a thousand years. Their eyes of stone have beheld the courses of the stars change in heaven; generations have worshiped at their feet of granite. Rivers have changed their courses; dynasties have passed away since first they took their seats upon their thrones of mountain rock, and placed their giant hands upon their knees. Changeless as the granite hill from whose womb they were delivered by hieratic art, they watch over the face of Egypt, far-gazing through the pillars of the temple into the palm-shadowed valley beyond. Their will is inexorable as the hard rock of which their forms are wrought; their faces have neither pity nor mercy, because they are the faces of gods!
The priests close up the tomb; they chant their holy and awful hymn. Radames finds his Aïdabeside him. She had concealed herself in the darkness that she might die in his arms.
The footsteps of the priests, the sacred hymn, die away. Alone in the darkness above, at the feet of the silent gods, there is a sound as of a woman's weeping. It is Amneris, the daughter of the king. Below in everlasting gloom the lovers are united at once in love and death. And Osiris, forever impassible, gazes into the infinite night with tearless eyes of stone.
The mother was a small and almost grotesque personage, with a somewhat mediæval face, oaken colored and long and full of Gothic angularity; only her eyes were young, full of vivacity and keen comprehension. The daughter was tall and slight and dark; a skin with the tint of Mexican gold; hair dead black and heavy with snaky ripples in it that made one think of Medusa; eyes large and of almost sinister brilliancy, heavily shadowed and steady as a falcon's; she had that lengthened grace of dancing figures on Greek vases, but on her face reigned the motionless beauty of bronze—never a smile or frown. The mother, a professed sorceress, who told the fortunes of veiled women by the light of a lamp burning before a skull, did not seem to me half so weird a creature as the daughter. The girl always made me think of Sou they's witch, kept young by enchantment to charm Thalaba.
The house was a mysterious ruin: walls green with morbid vegetation of some fungous kind; humid rooms with rotting furniture of a luxurious and antiquated pattern; shrieking stairways; yielding and groaning floors; corridors forever dripping with a cold sweat; bats under the roof and ratsunder the floor; snails moving up and down by night in wakes of phosphorescent slime; broken shutters, shattered glass, lockless doors, mysterious icy draughts, and elfish noises. Outside there was a kind of savage garden—torchon trees, vines bearing spotted and suspicious flowers, Spanish bayonets growing in broken urns, agaves, palmettoes, something that looked like green elephant's ears, a monstrous and ill-smelling species of lily with a phallic pistil, and many vegetable eccentricities I have never seen before. In a little stable-yard at the farther end were dyspeptic chickens, nostalgic ducks, and a most ancient and rheumatic horse, whose feet were always in water, and who made nightmare moanings through all the hours of darkness. There were also dogs that never barked and spectral cats that never had a kittenhood. Still the very ghastliness of the place had its fantastic charm for me. I remained; the drowsy Southern spring came to vitalize vines and lend a Japanese monstrosity to the tropical jungle under my balconied window. Unfamiliar and extraordinary odors floated up from the spotted flowers; and the snails crawled upstairs less frequently than before. Then a fierce and fevered summer!
It was late in the night when I was summoned to the Cuban's bedside: a night of such stifling and motionless heat as precedes a Gulf storm: the moon, magnified by the vapors, wore a spectral nimbus;the horizon pulsed with feverish lightnings. Its white flicker made shadowy the lamp-flame in the sick-room at intervals. I bade them close the windows. "El Vómito?"—already delirious; strange ravings; the fine dark face phantom-shadowed by death; singular and unfamiliar symptoms of pulsation and temperature; extraordinary mental disturbance. Could this be Vómito? There was an odd odor in the room—ghostly, faint, but sufficiently perceptible to affect the memory:—I suddenly remembered the balcony overhanging the African wildness of the garden, the strange vines that clung with webbed feet to the ruined wall, and the peculiar, heavy, sickly, somnolent smell of the spotted blossoms! And as I leaned over the patient, I became aware of another perfume in the room, a perfume that impregnated the pillow—the odor of a woman's hair, the incense of a woman's youth mingling with the phantoms of the flowers, as ambrosia with venom, life with death, a breath from paradise with an exhalation from hell. From the bloodless lips of the sufferer, as from the mouth of one oppressed by some hideous dream, escaped the name of the witch's daughter. And suddenly the house shuddered through all its framework, as if under the weight of invisible blows: a mighty shaking of walls and windows—the storm knocking at the door.
I found myself alone with her; the moans of the dying could not be shut out; and the storm knockedlouder and more loudly, demanding entrance. "It is not the fever," I said. "I have lived in lands of tropical fever; your lips are even now humid with his kisses, and you have condemned him. My knowledge avails nothing against this infernal craft; but I know also that you must know the antidote which will baffle death;—this man shall not die!—I do not fear you!—I will denounce you!—He shall not die!"
For the first time I beheld her smile—the smile of secret strength that scorns opposition. Gleaming through the diaphanous whiteness of her loose robe, the lamplight wrought in silhouette the serpentine grace of her body like the figure of an Egyptian dancer in a mist of veils, and her splendid hair coiled about her like the vipérine locks of a gorgon.
"La voluntad de mi madre!" she answered calmly. "You are too late! You shall not denounce us! Even could you do so, you could prove nothing. Your science, as you have said, is worth nothing here. Do you pity the fly that nourishes the spider? You shall do nothing so foolish, señor doctor, but you will certify that the stranger has died of the vómito. You do not know anything; you shall not know anything. You will be recompensed. We are rich." Without, the knocking increased, as if the thunder sought to enter: I, within, looked upon her face, and the face was passionless and motionless as the face of a woman of bronze.
She had not spoken, but I felt her serpent litheness wound about me, her heart beating against my breast, her arms tightening about my neck, the perfume of her hair and of her youth and of her breath intoxicating me as an exhalation of enchantment. I could not speak; I could not resist; spellbound by a mingling of fascination and pleasure, witchcraft and passion, weakness and fear—and the storm awfully knocked without, as if summoning the stranger; and his moaning ceased.
Whence she came, the mother, I know not. She seemed to have risen from beneath:
"The doctor is conscientious!—he cares for his patient well. The stranger will need his excellent attention no more. The conscientious doctor has accepted his recompense; he will certify what we desire—will he not, hija mia?"
And the girl mocked me with her eyes, and laughed fiercely.
The old Creole gentleman had forgotten his snuff-box—the snuff-box he had carried constantly with him for thirty years, and which he had purchased in Paris in days when Louisiana planters traveled through Europe leaving a wake of gold behind them, the trail of a tropical sunset of wealth. It was lying upon my table. Decidedly the old gentleman's memory was failing!
There was a dream of Theocritus wrought upon the ivory lid of the snuff-box, created by a hand so cunning that its work had withstood unscathed all the accidents of thirty odd years of careless usage—a slumbering dryad; an amorous faun!
The dryad was sleeping like a bacchante weary of love and wine, half-lying upon her side; half upon her bosom, pillowing her charming head upon one arm. Her bed was a mossy knoll; its front transformed by artistic magic into one of those Renaissance scroll-reliefs which are dreams of seashells; her ivory body moulded its nudity upon the curve of the knoll with antique grace.