Chapter II: Part 2

_September 12, 1812. We can see Moscow!_

Imagine a yellow, barren plain, over it gold-dust haze, brightening and darkening as the wind sways it, through which rise a multitude of green and red and blue and silver domes, surmounted by gold, lace-work crosses. It floats in the air. It is the creation of a magician. At the same time it is very real, and touched with mystery and age--the immemorial age of the East.

* * * * *

_September 15, 1812._ We are in Moscow. The city is deserted. Kutusow took his troops and went away. It was not fear that made him. Something terrible is going to happen. Why do not the French suspect?

It is unimaginable--the effect of this silent, wonderful city. Who would dream of a city here--on the barren plain that stretches eastward to Asia! And such a city! Italian palaces by the side of Tartar huts! Bazaars where the wonders of the Orient are displayed!

The soldiers are pillaging right and left. Entire squadrons go about decked in gold and embroidered gauzes fit for the harems of Stamboul.

It is like a festival in honor of a pagan god. This illusion is heightened by the fires which are burning everywhere, like incense.

Never before did the bitter North see anything like this. Like this life must have been in the old days--in Alexandria and in Mitylene.

* * * * *

_September 17, 1812._ It has come! It could not be put off longer. Last night the Emperor summoned me to him. He was in the Uspenski Sobore, the cathedral where the Russian emperors are crowned. Here he has set up his abode. The splendor of the room I entered was overpowering. It was magnificent, imposing, glittering with marbles, with paintings, and with decorations, made out of barbaric gold. It was lighted by a thousand candles, each as tall as the body of a man. Yet the corners and the roof were black and impenetrable.

No sooner had I entered than he drew me to him with that silent fury I remembered. Then he hastened to make fast the door.

“Now I can unfold my plan--I, who am master of the world. For five years I have loved you and asked nothing in return. Now is my time. You are to be my Empress--Empress of the East. This shall be your capital, Russia and the Orient your crown lands. You shall be what Yek-Katarina dreamed always of being--Empress of the East.”

“But--Sire--the church! Could it bless a union like ours?”

“The church? Why, I shall be the church!”

I saw that he was drunk with the deadliest wine that can be given to mortals--success, and the too great favors of destiny.

“Sire, I have considered. I will follow your will--on one condition.”

Here some one knocked at the door.

“The city is on fire! Lose no time. Save yourself!”

“And what is that?” paying not the slightest heed to the interruption.

“Sire, Russia’s supply of powder is under the Kremlin. In an instant we may all be destroyed. Sire! Sire!”

“And what is that?”

The pounding on the door became deafening. The great windows were so lighted by the flames outside that they dimmed the candles. The floor, made of bricks of steel, was as red with the reflection as a sea of blood.

“The freedom of Poland, Sire.”

“I grant it.”

“Why should you not? Poland was cut up to make presents for the lovers of Catherine. Why should it not be united for the one love of Napoleon?”

“Sire! Sire! Open the door. Do not risk your life--the fate of France. Open! Open!”

“Write then its freedom here,” snatching a piece of paper and spreading it before him.

I felt no fear. I was conscious only of a great exaltation,--the sensation he had first taught me to know. Death was nothing in comparison with the goal I sought.

“Write, Sire, write!”

We were then in such an intensity of many-colored light that the farthest top of the great dome shone red like a baker’s oven. The knocking and the voices increased, grew deafening.

“An instant, just another instant!” I prayed, “until that paper is in my hands!”

“Dictate; it shall be as you wish.”

“Write, then: ‘_que la République de Pologne soit maintenue dans son état de libre élection et qu’il ne soit permis à personne de rendre le dit royaume héréditaire dans sa famille ou de s’y rendre absolu_.’”

Just as he reached the place of signature, the door fell and the Prince of Naples, followed by frightened soldiers, rushed in.

“What are you writing?” He snatched the paper from the table. By this time the room was half filled with soldiers.

_The freedom of Poland!_

“Sire, this woman is the tool of Russia. See, here is the letter written to her by Prince Adam Czartoryisky. Listen, Sire, listen!

“‘With you to help, we will lure Napoleon, who is now drunk with success, to a banquet of death in the heart of White Russia.’”

The look on the face of the Great Emperor is one of the things which the merciful God will never permit me to forget. Upon it dawned in quick succession the intelligence of all those baffling defeats, followed by a mingled look of anger, surprise, and that which cut me deepest--grief.

“Sire,” continued the Prince of Naples, “outside waits her escort sent by His Imperial Majesty, Alexander, to rescue her from burning Moscow.”

“Take her to her escort,” was the stern reply.

Not one word, not one glance, did he give to me.

As I drove away toward Warsaw, I saw him for one last instant standing on the pictured Kremlin wall, fearless and calm, a pagan god for whom a city fell in ruin. Behind and beside, the conflagration rolled its waves of flame.

I had been faithful to my country, to my duty, yet I felt the greatest contempt for myself.

You see, I was beneath his anger.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Great Catherine. In the middle of the Eighteenth Century the Russians called Catherine II. _Yek-Katarina_, which is equivalent in English to Arch-Catherine.

[2] Krasinski--Count Sigismund, a Polish writer best known as the author of _Irydion_, which, under the thin covering of a fable, tells the tragic story of Poland. He was a prominent figure in the Paris of that day.

[3] Pan Kasimir Brodzinski, Polish critic.

[4] One of the greatest poets of Poland. His poems, ballads and his sonnets--in which he pictures the Crimea and the mountain world of Southern Russia--have been translated into the languages of the Continent. He is numbered among the Polish patriots of 1830.

[5] Polish poet who wrote _Maria, An Heroic Tale of the Ukraine_.

[6] Slav proverb.

[7] Author’s translation.

THE PAINTER OF DEAD WOMEN

We were lingering over one of our honeymoon breakfasts in Naples, my husband dividing his attention between _Il Corriere di Napoli_ and his coffee, and I planning for my favorite pastime, swimming, in that sea which looks like a liquid sapphire.

“‘No clue to the mysterious disappearance of the Contessa Fabriani,’” he read. “‘After a month’s search, the police are baffled.’”

“That does not sound particularly remarkable to you, I suppose. Women--and men, too, for that matter--have disappeared from other cities. But this adds another chapter to a mysterious story of crime.

“For twenty-five years not only native Italian women, but visiting women of other nations have disappeared from Naples, and nothing has afterward been heard of them. The peculiar part about it is that they have all been young and beautiful, and women of the upper class.”

I paid little heed to his words. I was thinking of other things. Besides, Luigi was a Neapolitan and interested in all the happenings of his native city. On my first visit to Naples I did not have time to interest myself in a sensational story such as I could read any morning in the London papers.

“You have not forgotten that to-night is the ball?” said my husband, consulting his watch and jumping up. “I want you to look particularly lovely. All my friends--and your old rivals--will be there. Business takes me from the city for the day, and in case I should not return in time to accompany you, I have arranged for Cousin Lucia to meet you at ten at the door of the Cinascalchi Palace. I shall come later--in time for part of the dancing. Tell Pietro to get you there at exactly ten,” he called, after he had kissed me good-by.

When I took a last look at myself in the glass that night, I felt that I had obeyed my husband’s instructions. I was looking particularly lovely. I had dressed with the purpose of appearing as unlike Italian women as possible.

My slim six feet of stature was arrayed in a plain white satin princess, from which the shoulders rose scarcely less white and satiny. My hair was the color of the upland furze, and my cheeks glowed like the roses of an English garden.

“Pietro!” I called, after we had driven what seemed to me a very long time. “Are you sure that you are going in the right direction? I did not suppose that it was outside the city.”

He reassured me and drove on.

We entered the courtyard of a country estate. As I stepped from the carriage, I saw in the distance the grouped lights of Naples. Pietro whipped the horses and drove off before I had time to speak.

There were no other carriages in the yard. Could I have mistaken the time? Lucia was not there to meet me, either. “She is probably within,” I reflected, “since the palace is bright with light.”

Doors swung back softly and as if by magic. I entered. The blaze of light that rushed out all but blinded me. Words cannot express the horror of it nor the silence that accompanied it. There were no servants moving about. No one was in sight. I was alone.

Imagine a sweep of majestic rooms whose floors were polished to the surface consistency of stone; straight white walls of mirrored marble, and, blazing from walls and ceiling, prisms of cut crystal. Wherever you looked the glitter of light flashed back at you, confusing your eyes and dazing your brain. I did not suppose that light could hold such terror.

“There is surely some mistake,” I whispered. “This is no place for dancing or merriment. It is more like a white and shining sepulchre. I would rather trust myself to the night outside,” and I turned toward the door with the purpose of leaving. But the space behind, where I knew that I had entered, presented a smooth and evenly paneled surface. There was no door. Nor was there place for lock or knob. As I stood confused and hesitating, I learned to the full the demoniac power of light. The slightest motion of my body, my head, my breathing, even, sent from polished corners and cornice quivering arrows into my eyes. The mirrors and the shining marble reflected floor and ceiling until it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began. It seemed, after a time, that I was floating head downward in a sea of light.

Then something righted me sharply. It was not sound nor was it thought. It appealed to subtler senses. It was as if the material body was endowed with a thinking machine and each pore contained a brain. It aroused some consciousness which the hypnotism of light had dulled. I knew then that I was standing, slim and white and frozen with terror, in the focus of the light.

I felt the cold diamonds shift their position upon my throat and breast and tremble as I breathed irregularly. I heard the sibilant slipping of the stiff satin as it fell into a changed position.

A powerful and dominant brain had touched my own. For one unconscious moment it had ruled it and set upon it the seal of its thought.

Such a passion of fear assailed me that it seemed as if I must choke. My fascinated eyes turned toward the end of the farthest room. From there the message came. There, I knew, was something compelling, something electric. Exactly in the center of that far room, and very erect, stood a man. He was coming toward me, too, slowly--very slowly. Yet I heard not the slightest sound. Evidently he was shod with rubber. He moved as I have seen a malevolent spider move toward a prisoned fly, enjoying the pleasure of motion because he knows that there is no escape for his victim. Just as gracefully and easily did he move toward me. And as he came, I knew that he read my soul, measured my strength and my power of resistance, and at the same time admired the white erectness of my body.

Fear, as with a bitter acid, etched his picture on my brain. He was very tall--taller than I by a good inch--and faultlessly attired; a patrician, but a degenerate patrician, the body alone having preserved its ancient dignity.

Ribboned decorations brightened his coat, and I saw a garter on his leg.

He was thinner than any one I ever saw and correspondingly supple. His movements had the fascination of a serpent. Thus might a serpent move, if its coiled length were poised erect.

His head would have been beautiful, had not the features been so delicately chiseled that strength and nobility had been refined away, and in their place had come effeminacy and a certain cold and delicate cruelty.

He was an old man, too, and his heavy hair was white. His brows, however, were black and youthful, and from beneath looked out blue eyes. The eyes were the color of light when it shines through thick ice. They were the color of the sharp edge of fine steel when it is bared too quickly to the sun. In the same hard way the light ran across them.

But the strangest part was that there seemed to be no limit to their depth. However far you looked within, you could not find a person. You could not surprise a consciousness. There was no soul there. In its stead there was merely a keen and destructive intelligence.

I realized that the man coming toward me did not live by means of the physical acts of life. He had learned to live by his brain. He was a cerebral!

I sensed his dominant personality and struggled against it. I sensed, too, the presence of a numbing mental fluid that crippled my will and dulled me as does that sweet-smelling death which surgeons call the anæsthetic.

He had stripped himself of human attributes. He knew nothing of fear, pity, love.

“I have the honor of meeting, I believe, the bride of the Leopardi.” He bowed and spoke in an even, unemotional voice.

I bowed in return. “How is it possible for you to know that? I do not remember having met you.”

“It is not necessary to have met me. No beautiful woman comes to Naples whom I do not know. I,” bowing again, “am Count Ponteleone, painter of dead women. You have probably heard of me.”

“Who has not!” I exclaimed, somewhat reassured and wondering that this could be the man whose name was resounding through two continents.

“This intrusion--which I beg you to pardon--is due to the coachman’s mistake. I am expected at the Cinascalchi ball. My husband and cousin await me there. If you will send me on in your carriage, I shall be grateful.”

“Oh, no, your coachman made no mistake,” calmly ignoring my request. “I brought him here and you, too, as I have brought other women--by this,” tapping his forehead.

“You are graciously jesting to excuse my rudeness,” I managed to stammer, summoning the ghost of a smile.

“Well, we may as well call it a jest if you wish. It is a jest which ought to flatter. I entertain only beautiful women here.”

The glance that accompanied this enveloped me from head to foot. It was a glance of admiration, and yet in it there was none of the desire of would-be love. It was devoid of warmth and emotion. Nothing could be more impersonal. No mark of material beauty had escaped it. It was the trained glance of a connoisseur which measures accurately. I might have been a picture or a piece of furniture.

I felt that he knew my racial standing, my rank as a human animal, by the delicate roundness of my bones and the fine fiber of my flesh. I had been as glass to his intelligent gaze. Somehow, then, I felt that the body of me belonged to him because of this masterly penetration which substance could not resist.

“Since you are to be my guest, we might seek a more comfortable place to converse.”

He led the way to the center of the great rooms where, touching an invisible spring, doors flew back, disclosing a drawing-room draped in red. As he bowed me to a seat, he remarked: “Here you look like a pearl dropped in a cup of blood.”

I, too, thought that I had never seen so wicked a red nor one so suggestive of luxurious crime. The comparison jarred upon me and prickled me with fear.

As he sank back in an easy-chair opposite, I saw how the red walls touched with color the whiteness of his hair and sent occasional ruddy gleams into the depth of his eyes.

“You are an Englishwoman, too,” he observed, with evident relish. “I knew it. Only the mists and rains of England can make color like yours. Did you notice how well we looked together as we walked along between the mirrors? Are we not as if made for each other--tall and regal--both of us? What a picture we would make!”

It occurred to me then, with unpleasant appropriateness, that he was the painter of _dead women_.

“It is an English woman, too, that I lack for my collection,” he mused meditatively.

“Collection! Have you a collection of women? That is certainly unique. I have heard of collections of bugs, birds,--but women, never. Perhaps you would like me to join it!”

“Indeed I should! I never saw a woman I admired so tremendously.”

I drew back in fear, silenced by the ardor of his words.

“Oh, you need not be afraid. I am not like other men. I do not love as they love. I love only with my brain. While you have been sitting here, I have caressed you a thousand times, and you have not even suspected it. I do not want the bestial common pleasures which my coachman can have, or my scullion can buy with a _lira_. Why should not I be as much superior to them in my loves as in my life? If I am not, then I am not their superior in any way. My pleasures are those of another plane of life, of a brain touched to a keener fire, of nerves that have reached the highest point of pleasurable vibration. Besides, when I love, I love only dead women. Life reaches its perfection only when death comes. _Life is never real until then_,” he added.

“Perhaps you would like to kill me for your amusement to-night,” I replied, still trying to keep up the jest. “I have always flattered myself, however, that I was better alive.”

No sooner were the words out than I regretted them. His face grew thin and strained like a bird-dog’s on the scent. His lips became expressive of a terrible desire, and his frail hands trembled with anticipation.

As I looked, his pupils disappeared, and his eyes became two pools of blue and blazing light. Unwittingly I had hit upon his object. I had surprised his purpose in a jest.

Who could have dreamed of this! At the worst, I thought, I might be detained for two or three days, forced to serve him for a model, and cause worry to my husband and gossiping comment.

But whose imagination could have reached this! Strangely enough, the decree of death that I read in his face dissipated my fear. I became calm and collected. In an instant I was mistress of myself and ready to fight for life. The blood stopped pounding in my brain. I could think with normal clearness.

“The worst of it is,” I reflected, “this man is not mad. If he were, I might be able to play upon some delusion for freedom. He has passed the point where madness begins. He has gone just so much too far the other way.”

“Then you really think that you could love me if I were dead,” I laughed, leaning toward him gayly. “Is it not rather a strange requisite for winning a woman’s love? What would my reward be? Are you sure you could not endure me any other way?”

“Do not jest about sacred things! Death,” he answered slowly and reprovingly, “is the thing most to be desired by beautiful women. It saves them from something worse--old age. An ugly woman can afford to live; a beautiful woman can not. The real object of life is to ripen the body to its limit of physical perfection, and then, just as you would a perfect fruit, pluck and preserve it. Death sets the definite seal upon its perfection, that is, if death can be controlled to prevent decay. And that is what I can do,” he added proudly, getting up in his abstraction and pacing up and down the room. “And what difference does it make, what day it comes? All days march toward death.”

I admired unreservedly the elegant, intellectualized figure, now that I had thrown fear to the winds.

“Come,” he pleaded, “let me kill you! It is because I love you that I ask you. It is because I think that your physical self is worth being preserved. Your future will be assured. You will never be less happy than now, less lovely, less triumphant. You will always be an object of admiration.”

“What a magician you are to picture death attractively! But tell me more about it first.”

Joy leaped up and sang in my heart at the prospect of the struggle. I felt as the race-horse feels when, knowing the strength and the suppleness of his limbs, he sees the long white track unfold before him.

“In ancient days my ancestors,” he began, “were Roman Governors in Spain. At the court of one of them, Vitellius Ponteleone, lived a famous Jewish physician (in old Spanish days the Jews were the first of scientists), by name Ibn Ezra. He made a poison (poison is not the right word, I regret greatly its vulgar suggestiveness) from a mineral which has now vanished from the face of the earth. This poison causes a delicious, pleasureful death, and at the same time arrests physical decay. Now, if you will just let me inject one drop of it into that white arm of yours, you will be immortal--superior to time and change, indestructibly young. You do not seem to realize the greatness of the offer. For this honor I have selected you from all the women in Naples.”

“It is an honor, of course; but, like a proposal of marriage, it seems to me important and to require consideration.”

“Oh, no, it is not important. We have to prepare for life, but for death we are always ready. Besides, I am offering you a chance to choose your own death. How many can do that!”

“Do not think that I am ungrateful, good Count, but--”

“One little drop of the liquid will run through your veins like flame, cutting off thought and all centers of painful sensation. Only a dim sweet memory of pleasant things will remain. Gradually, then, cells and arteries and flesh will harden. In time your body will attain the hardness of a diamond and the whiteness of fine marble. But it is months, years, before the brain dies. I am not really sure that it ever dies. In it, like the iridescent reflections upon a soap bubble, live the shadows of past pleasures. There is no other immortality that can equal this which I offer. Every day that you live now lessens your beauty. In a way every day is a vulgar death. It coarsens and over-colors your skin, dulls the gold of your hair, makes this bodily line, or this, a bit too full. That is why I brought you here to-night, at the height of your beauty, just as love and life have crowned you.”

“It must be a remarkable liquid. Let me see it. Is it with you?”

“No, indeed! It is kept in a vault which it takes an hour to open. It is guarded as are the crown jewels of Italy,” he responded proudly.

“There is no immediate danger,” I thought. “There is time. Now the road lies long before me.”

“I suppose there is an antidote for--this liquid. I will not call it poison, since you dislike the word so greatly.”

“None that is known now. You see it destroys instantly what only patient nature can rebuild.”

“I am greatly interested in it. Show me the other women upon whom you have tried it. I am eager to see its effect.”

“I knew you would be. Come this way.”

We ascended a staircase, where again I felt the sting of light. Upon a landing, half-way up, he paused and pointed to our reflected figures.

“Are we not as if made for each other--you and I? When I sleep the white liquid sleep, I shall arrange that it be beside you.”

My death evidently was firmly determined upon.

At the top he unlocked a door, and we entered a room where some fifty women were dancing a minuet. Above them great crystal chandeliers swung, giving to their jewels and their shimmering silks and satins reflected life. Each one was in an attitude of arrested motion. It was as if they had been frozen in the maddest moment of a dance. But what a horrible sight--this dance of dead women, this mimic merriment of death!

“You know my picture of this scene, do you not?” said he, turning on more light. “They were perfect models, I can assure you. I can paint them for hours in any light.

“When I die I shall bequeath to Naples this art gallery. Will it not be a gift to be proud of? Nothing can surpass it in uniqueness. Then the bodies of these women will have attained the hardness and the whiteness of fine marble. They can in no way be distinguished from it except by their hair.

“Of course now, if the outside world knew of this, I should be punished as a murderer.”

How firmly it is settled in his mind that the outside world is mine no more!

“But then I shall be revered as a scientist who preserved for posterity the most perfect human specimens of the age in which I lived. I shall be looked upon as a God. It is as great to preserve life as it is to make it.”

The next room we entered was a luxurious boudoir. Before an exquisite French dressing-table sat a woman whose bronze hair swept the floor. On either side peacocks stood with outspread tails. Their backs served as a rest for a variety of jeweled hair-pins, one of which she was in the act of picking up.

“That is the Contessa Fabriani. She is not dead yet. She hears every word we say, but she is unable to speak. I am painting her now. You can see the unfinished picture against the wall.”

In an adjoining room a dark-skinned woman of the Orient, whose black and unbound hair showed purplish tints, was reclining upon the back of a Bengal tiger. Other Eastern women lay upon couches and divans.

“See, even in death, what enticing languor! See the arrested dreams in their dark eyes, deep as an Oriental night! These women I have loved very greatly. Sometimes I have a fancy that death cannot touch them. In them there is an electric energy, the stored-up indestructible ardor of the sun, which, I like to fancy, death cannot dissipate.”

“Now here,” said the Count, opening another door, “I will show you an effect I have tried for years to reproduce. This has been the desire of my life.”

He flung back a row of folding windows, making the room on one side open to the sea.

“It is the effect of the blended radiance flung from the water here and the moon, upon dull silver, upon crystal, and the flesh of blond women.”

He turned out the lights. The moon sent an eerie, shivering luster across the crystal and silver decorations, and touched three women in robes of white, who were standing in attitudes of dreaming indolence.

“This thin, ethereal, surface light, this _puissance de lumière_, is what I have tried in vain to prison. I have always been greedy of the difficult and the unattainable. If I could do this, I should be the prince of painters! It is a fact, a real thing, and yet it possesses the magic of dreams, the enchantment of the fleeting and the illusory.

“I wish to be the wizard of light. I wish to be the only one to prison its bright, defiant insubstantiality.

“Can you not see how wonderful it is? It is the dust of light. Reflected upon silver and clear crystal it is what shadow is to sound. Sometimes it seems to me like a thin, clear acid; then like some blue, sweet-smelling volatile liquid, eager again to join the air.

“Have you noticed how it penetrates blond flesh? It reveals, yet transfigures it. I wish you could watch its effect often. Sometimes the wind churns the sea-light into transparent foam. Then I love its curd-like, piled-up whiteness. Sometimes when there is no moon, and only a wan, tremulous luster from the water, the light of a far star is focused on their satins, on their diamonds, struggles eerily among their laces, or flickers mournfully from a pearl. The room then is filled with a regretful, metallic radiance. The stars caress them. They have become impersonal, you see, and the eternal things love them.

“When the autumn moons are high, the light that fills the room is resonant and yellow. It tingles like a crystal. It gives their cold white satins the yellow richness of the peach’s heart, and to the women the enticing languor of life. On such nights the moonlight is musical and makes the crystal vibrate.

“Now, to-night, the light is more like the vanishing ripple of the sea. Is it not wonderful? Look! It is the twin of silence, the ghost of light!”

In his excitement and exhilaration, his eyes shone like the moon-swept sea. I knew that in them, too, slept terrors inconceivable.

“This is the room I have in mind for you. You will queen it by a head over the other women. The color of your dress is right. Your gems, too, are white. Here, sometime, I promise to join you, and together we will be immortal.

“Excuse me just a moment. Wait here. Let me get the liquid and show it to you. You will be fascinated by it, just as other women have been. I never saw one who could resist it.”

As he left, I heard the key turn in the lock. When we entered the other rooms, I remembered that he bolted the doors on the inside. This door, then, was the only one by which he could gain entrance. Swiftly I slipped the bolt. Now I was safe--for a time, unless there was a secret entrance.

It was not far from the window to the water. I laughed with delight. I had dived that distance many a time for pleasure. I was one of the best swimmers in England, and I had always longed for a plunge in this sapphire sea. Now was my chance and life as the goal to gain. I took off my satin gown as gayly as I had put it on. Like the Count of Ponteleone, I, too, admired the play of light on its piled-up whiteness. How merrily the sea-wind came! How it counseled courage!

I took the plunge. Down, down, down I went, cleaving the clear water. The distance up seemed interminable. It was like being born again when at last I saw the white foam feather my arms and felt my lungs expand with air. I swam in the direction of Naples. I could not reach the city, but I could easily reach some fisher’s hut and there gain shelter.

Oh, the delight of that warm, bright water under the moon! I felt that the strength of my arms and my legs was inexhaustible. I exulted in the water as a bird exults in its natural element, the air.

After I had covered what I thought to be a safe distance, I turned on my back and floated. Then I caught sight of the window from which I had leaped. It was brilliantly lighted. Count Ponteleone was leaning from it, his white hair shining like a malevolent flame.

Despite the distance, I could feel the power of his wild blue eyes, which sparkled like the sea. Again I dived, lest they should reassert their power over me and draw me back.

I came up under the shadow of the shore, and made my way along until I reached a boat where Neapolitan fisherwomen were spreading their nets to dry.

They took me in, and for the doubled price of a good month’s fishing brought me that night to Naples.

“Ah, Luigi,” I sobbed, as he folded me in his arms, “little did I think, when you spoke of the dance this morning, that I should spend the night with the dead dancing women of Ponteleone.”

“Nor I that you would solve Naples’ mystery of crime.”

THE MIRROR OF LA GRANJA

_¿Que es el hombre? Un misterio. ¿Que es la vida? ¡Un misterio tambien!_

ESPRONCEDA.

“Sólo en tiempo de Felipe II, cuando el espíritu del Renacimiento se hacía sentir allí, fueron pintadas muchas hermosas damas para su galería de retratos del Prado.”--CARLOS JUSTI.[8]

(In the time of Philip the Second, when the spirit of the Renaissance was being felt, he had many beautiful women painted for his gallery of the Prado.--CARLOS JUSTI.)

I arrived in Toulouse on my homeward way to Spain in the midspring of 1898.

For three years I had toured the world with my violin, giving concerts in its principal cities. I had been flatteringly received. Men had showered their gold upon me; women their flowers and favors. I was acclaimed the Spanish Paganini, the greatest of violinists, the premier artist upon this difficult instrument. I had been surfeited with applause. I had been fêted until I was weary. Now I was looking forward to a well-merited rest in which to gratify my love of art, and, perhaps, try my hand at composing. In addition, I longed for the dignified ease, the cultivated leisure of the life of a Spanish gentleman. During the years of concert giving, I had earned enough to give myself this pleasure. I felt, too, that there is something ignoble in prostituting art to gold and the indiscriminate applause of the multitude. Art should be superior to traffic, accessible only to intelligent understanding and to love.

As I mused, a messenger entered and handed me a telegram. It announced the death of my maternal great-uncle, the Conde de Quederos. The telegram said that before the burial every effort had been made to reach me, and that since there were no direct heirs, I, as nearest in blood, inherited the estate.

I could not grieve over my uncle’s death. I could not be expected to. I had never seen him but once, and that was when I was a child. In addition, I knew that he was old, almost if not quite a centenarian, and that long ago life must have lost its charm. My heart warmed with gratitude toward that kindly Fate which was bestowing favors upon me. Only that morning I had meditated as to what place in Spain, now that my parents were no more, I should choose for a residence. Here was the problem solved without effort on my part and in a most pleasing manner.

I went directly to Cuenca, to the dead Conde’s _castillo_, to the heart of that old Castile which the greedy Romans coveted. As I entered, I read upon the fluted shield above the door, “_Adelante_” (Go on). A brave race truly, whose motto was never to turn back.

In the hall the lined-up servants met me, and each addressed me gravely as Conde de Quederos. That night I had a conference with the steward as to the rooms which I was to occupy.

“The finest suite in the _castillo, Señor mio_, is the one the late Conde occupied. It is called ‘The Suite of the Mirrors.’”

“Mirrors!” The word stirred responsive memory. “Is not there a magic mirror, so called, here in the castle? It seems to me I remember having heard something of the kind.”

“_Si, Señor mio._ It is in the drawing-room from which the suite takes its name. They were all made by the late Conde’s great-grandfather at La Granja. Mirror-making was his hobby.”

Yes, yes; now I recalled the stories my mother had told. Aloud I said: “That is the suite which shall be mine. Show me up.”

“Shall I light the drawing-room?”

“No; open the blinds and leave me while you have my bags unpacked and my chamber made ready.”

The suite consisted of a bed-chamber with dressing-room attached, and a sitting-room, which from its size and adornment was called “The Drawing-Room of the Mirrors.”

Here I sat down to rest and smoke my after-dinner cigar. The dim summer night filled the ancient room with frail shadows, making the mirrors, which reached from floor to ceiling, look like pale plates of tarnished steel.

I remembered it all now! It came back in a vivifying flash of thought. The male members of my mother’s family, excepting the late Conde, had been scientists _enragés_. They had preferred, too, the delusive by-ways, the dangerous and insecure footings, where fact borders upon fancy, where the will-o’-the-wisp of unrealized possibility lures on. They had wasted life and impaired their fortunes in following unattainable fancies and in trying to wrest from nature secrets forbidden to man. They had been men of strange vagaries and inexplainable passions, who found the pleasure of existence in ways not understood by others.

The great-grandfather of the late Conde had been devoted to mirror-making. It was his effort and his wealth that had brought to La Granja the first Venetian _specchiai_, and those who made _verres de cristal_ and wrested from them their secret. He sent to England to Lord Buckingham and to France to Colbert to purchase the knowledge of their workmen in this fascinating art. And it was he who made the sixteen mirrors in the room in which I sat.

Indeed, the age in which he lived had been mad over glass-making. The Council of Ten of the Venetian Republic went so far as to pass a law that its nobles might wed with the glass-makers of Murano without loss of caste. It was the only work which did not detract from a great noble’s dignity.

France imitated Venice and made a similar law. Spain, thanks to the effort of Conde de Quederos, was not behind in the art. Nor did the Conde lose standing among the ancient nobility of Castile for the hours spent at the furnace. With its introduction from Italy had come likewise its patent of nobility.

After the old Conde had gratified his love of mirror-making for years and had made fifteen of the sixteen mirrors which hung in the room in which I sat, his mind was teased with the desire to make a magic mirror.

With this object in view, he devoted himself to the chemistry of glass. He bought all the books and ancient manuscripts procurable upon the subject. He thought of nothing else. He talked of nothing else, until it was commonly reported that he was mad. He insisted that it was possible to make a mirror of such exquisite purity, of such lustrous depth, that, like that Borgian glass which snapped in twain at the touch of poison, it should refuse to reflect material bodies and earthly substances and reproduce only the impassioned dreams of the mind, or the frail and insubstantial spirit forms which, having once been on earth, hover near in attempt to commune again with the creatures of the flesh. What wonder they called him mad!

A few days before his death, however, the sixteenth mirror was brought from La Granja and hung in the place reserved for it. Just what this mirror was like I could not remember having heard. The next night, when I was less weary, I determined to have a look at the old Conde’s productions. In the magic mirror I had no interest. The idea was too absurd. It was a madman’s dream.

The next evening I ordered the chandeliers to be lighted in the great drawing-room, and with my violin tucked under my arm hastened thither. It was a noble room that lay revealed beneath the glitter of the swinging crystals. I was glad that I had not spoiled the first effect by seeing it by day. It was lofty, and long by some forty feet. The floor was worked out in a curiously dim-bright design made of marble and ancient glass bricks, in whose depth glowed _mille fiori_. The ceiling was a richly resplendent canvas, whereon were depicted giant figures representing the loves of Hercules and Omphale. The walls were made up of alternate panels of mirrors, mural paintings continuing the stories of classic lovers, and spaces of mysteriously colored and strangely wrought glass, evidently rare and priceless specimens of the ancient workmen of La Granja.

At a glance the mirrors seemed as much alike as peas in a pod. They reached from floor to ceiling. They were framed uniformly in the heavily ornate frames with which fifteenth-century Italy supplied the world.

Yet the effect was most lovely. Between the feverish panels wherein the passion of flame had prisoned restless colors and the perfervid scenes of classic love, the mirrors interposed spaces of pale neutrality and mysterious calm. They afforded the relief that water affords in the out-of-door landscape. Their unsoundable depths of silence were like a telescopic glimpse into the night of space. They were the mute and motionless keepers of secrets of another world. Their pale passivity was more pleasant than silence. Yet at times they seemed to tell of the possibilities of a spirit life which was centered in colossal calm.

What artistry had been expended upon the decoration of these walls! That dead uncle could have been no ordinary man. My heart thrilled with pride. It was worth being called mad so to have understood the values of light.

Drawing an easy-chair before the central mirror, I took up my violin preparatory to playing. Then I noticed that the frame of the central mirror was unlike the others. I looked about to make sure. Yes, it was the only odd one. And odd enough it was, made of closed flower buds, tiny eggs, and folded leaves. It must mean something, that strange frame. It was not chosen with an eye single to decorative ends. It was an hieroglyph, a symbol. But what one? Each detail represented the sleeping germ of a life principle. In the egg, in the bud, life is folded. They pointed to the mirror edge. Did they mean that there too life was folded?

I leaned forward. The cold face of the mirror confronted me. I started with fear. I was not reflected in it! Nothing was reflected in it! Not an article of furniture, not a picture, not a bead of light from the great chandelier above. I looked about, This was the only odd mirror. I made sure of that. All the others were a-quiver with light and color. I held my hand in front of it. I waved my violin to and fro. In vain! They left not a trace upon its surface. Prickly fear crept over me. I shivered as if from touch of the dead or sweep of their icy breath. The mirror’s pallid passivity added to the horror. It was the silent mockery of the dead. And this horror was born, not of midnight noises and visions, but of silence and the splendor of light.

Only last night in this very room I had called my uncle a madman, a dreamer. How ashamed did I feel of my vain conceit of the evening, confronted with this production of his skill! It was as if some towering ghost smiled down scornful pity upon me, who stood there dancing about like a maniac in the effort to wrest a responsive reflection from that mute surface. Never had anything so undone me, so set me a-tremor with discomfort. I was in touch with something of which I knew nothing, with an unknown force whose extent and power I could not measure.

Controlling my nervousness, I sat down to contemplate the glass. It was like looking into the depths of a pellucid lake, whose surface had never been rumpled by wind or blurred with light. It was like a glance down infinitudes of space, clearly gray and sweetly translucent, but beyond the farthest rim of the worlds where not even star dust floated. It was a place where, defiant of natural law, light existed without object. It was a void over which nature had no power. It was a pale inanity, the antithesis of the life principle which is motion. It was a powerful and repellent nothing. A sickening dizziness assailed me. I felt as if I were perched upon the edge of an abyss wherein material substances were lost. I was conscious of a peculiar revulsion, a sort of mental nausea such as is experienced when watching a serpent move, throwing off electric vibrations at variance with the human organism.

This, then, was the mirror of the dead! It was a place for spectres to disport themselves! It was the gray shadow world where phantoms dwelled! Who could guess what slept within its depths! Who could guess what was looking out upon me now which my physical self could not discern!

I closed my eyes to shut out the sight and lifted the violin. The bow, as if moved by an impulse of its own, struck the slow, prolonged, high notes which announce the Saraband. An inspiration! Why should not I popularize the dance music of Spain as Chopin had that of Poland?

For a time I played on, repeating old airs and improvising new ones, but ever recurring to the Saraband. Nervousness vanished. Others had put up with this non-committal mirror, why should not I? Courage returned. Music exercised its old magic. Again I cared for nothing save my art.

I do not know how long this musical reverie had lasted when, opening my eyes, I saw in the depths of the mirror, but far, far away, a dim white figure. I was playing the Saraband. I noticed that when certain notes were struck the figure could be seen more plainly, that it grew in distinctness and came nearer, while others made it recede and fade away.

Was it the creation of my bow? Now for the first time was the demon-compelling power of Paganini mine? Through contemplation of that crystal surface had I purged my soul of impeding impurities, as if, denuded of clothes, I had swept through space and bathed in its crystal ozone? Had not the tones of my violin changed too? I listened critically. Yes; they had a certain heart quality which had been lacking, a luscious, singing richness, colorful and sweet. The single tone, divorced from melody, filled me with delight. Ambition leaped to giant height. Fear vanished. I could subdue the world--I--I, Lopez Manrico! I bent to my playing. Each time it was the Saraband that evoked the image. No other melody whatsoever had the power to do it. And there were certain phrases and turns of this that had especial effect upon it. Once I thought that I could discern the features of the figure, and I did glimpse it firmly enough to know that it was the figure of a woman.

How I tried to prolong the notes that were creating beneath my eyes that evanescent being! How, by trained trickery, did I try to prolong the instrument’s power of tone extension! It was useless. Strength failed. My arm grew weak and fell of its own accord, and the vision paled and faded.

The old Counts of Quederos had been scientists, I meditated. One had devoted himself to the relation of sound to the human body. Perhaps he had left a record of his discoveries. I would go to the library and see. At least the books that he had studied would be there. Excepting only the Imperial Library, the Castillo de Quederos contained the finest collection of rare books and manuscripts in Spain.

I ran to the room and lighted all the lights. Ardor of investigation filled me. If the problem could be solved, I would do it. Was it not a duty, too, since in a way the power lay with me? “_Le génie s’oblige._”

Here were the books of the old glass-maker, probably arranged just as he had left them: John Pechon’s treatise on optics, dating from the thirteenth century; Biringuccio’s receipts for glass-making; Garzoni’s chemistry of glass; the three books of Eraclius, who, in the early thirteenth century, got together all that was then known of the art. I took down the third volume. It opened at the seventh chapter, where begin the receipts for compounding the substance. This was not what I wanted. Nor did I care more for the poets--Lopez Mendoza, Ha Levi, nor the private letters of Cib-dareal, precious as they are.

As I replaced the latter, I felt something behind it. Inserting my hand, I pulled out a gilded cylinder. Within it lay a manuscript in an unknown tongue, and with it a translation made by a Spanish Jew. The manuscript proved to be _The Resurrecting Powers of Science_ by Abu Hamid Algazali of Bagdad. Something told me that my search was rewarded. I pulled a chair beneath the nearest light and there, until day, perused the parchment. It had suffered many a midnight perusal. Finger marks were upon it, and it was frayed and soiled. I read:

“Each body is responsive to a tone or a combination of tones.

“Each body is, in a sense, a musical instrument whose vibrating strings are taut nerves and muscles.

“The circulating blood sings a song.

“Heart-beats describe a melody.

“One of the energies wrapped up in the life principle is a musical chord.

“It is possible for music, if the right tone be discovered, to arrest ebbing life force, or to call back those who have passed beyond.”

“To call back those who have passed beyond!” Here it was! Now I understood. I had unwittingly hit upon the chord that vibrated in unison with the mirror vision. What a possibility lay before me! I could read no more. Dizzy with the discovery, I went to bed. I did not even pause to view the wonder of the dawn that was bleaching the night pale.

When again night came, I hastened to the drawing-room. I lighted every light. I locked and bolted the door. I would not permit an interruption.

Then I took the melody of the Saraband and transposed it from key to key. In this way the tone I sought could not elude me. The first notes of the dance evoked the figure, but it was so far away, so dim, it was scarcely more than a breath’s shadow. It was only with the key of F minor that a change came. Then the figure grew more distinct. Features were visible. It took on color, firm form. It came floating on, on, on, toward me, until within the glass just a few feet away stood a lithe, brown, Moorish girl. My heart choked me with its beating. It was all that I could do to command strength with which to continue the music.

Very gracefully she swayed to the melody of the Saraband, but she danced it in a way that was new to me. On her head rested a tiny cap fringed with vari-colored gems. She wore white muslin trousers, very full, gathered at the ankle with bells of gold, whose tongues were little stones that looked like flame. The upper part of her body was covered with a tight-fitting vest of pale blue, picked out in silver, and a tight-fitting coat of yellow satin, both of which were open to the waist, disclosing the brown skin. From under the cap her hair fell in long braids, intertwined with coral. Her little bare feet were encased in slippers with gem-studded heels. She was evidently a Moorish dancing-girl, but of an age long, long gone by.