 CHAPTER IX Oh, lady, we receive but what we give, and in our life alone does nature live. Ours is her wedding garments, ours her shroud. Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth a light, a glory, a fair, luminous cloud, enveloping the earth, and from the soul itself must there be sent a sweet and potent voice of its own birth, of all sweet sounds, the life and element. CHAPTER VI From this time until I arrived at the Palace of Fairyland I can attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and adventures. Everything henceforward existed for me in its relation to my attendant. What influence he exercised upon everything into contact with which I was brought may be understood from a few detached instances. To begin with this very day in which he first joined me. After I had walked heartlessly along for two or three hours I was very weary and lay down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest carpeted with wild flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull repose and then got up to pursue my way. The flowers on the spot where I had lain were crushed to the earth, but I saw that they would soon lift their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass and the scorched and shriveled flowers which stood there, dead and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered and hastened away with sad forebodings. In a few days I had reasoned to dread an extension of its baleful influences from the fact that it was no longer confined to one position in regard to myself. Hitherto when seized with an irresistible desire to look on my evil demon, which longing would unaccountably seize me at any moment returning at longer or shorter intervals, sometimes every minute, I had to turn my head backwards and look over my shoulder in which position as long as I could retain it I was fascinated. But one day having come out on a clear grassy hill which commanded a glorious prospect, though of what I cannot now tell, my shadow moved round and came in front of me, and presently a new manifestation increased my distress, for it began to coarsate and shoot out on all sides a radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom issued from the central shadows from a black sun, lengthening and shortening with continual change. But wherever a ray struck that part of earth or sea or sky became void and desert and sad to my heart. On this the first development of its new power one ray shot out beyond the rest, seeming to lengthen infinitely until it smoked the great sun on the face which withered and darkened beneath the blow. I turned away and went on. The shadow retreated to its former position, and then I looked again. It had drawn in all its spears out of darkness and followed like a dog in my heels. Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child with two wondrous toys one in each hand. The one was the tube through which the fairy gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing everywhere. The other that through which he looks when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child's head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight round crept from behind me the something dark and the child stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy with a rough broad-brimmed straw hat through which brim the sun shone from behind. The toys he carried were a multiplying glass and a kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed. One evening as a great silent flood of western gold flowed through an avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I saw him first came the sad night, writing on his chestnut-steed. But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first. Many a blow of mighty sword and axe turned aside by the strength of his mail and glancing adown the surface had swept from its path the fretted rust and the glorious steel had answered the kindly blow with the thanks of returning light. These streaks and spots made his armour look like the floor of a forest in the sunlight. His forehead was higher than before, for the contracting wrinkles were nearly gone and the sadness that remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer twilight, not that of a frosty autumn morn. He, too, had met the Aldermaden as I, but he had plunged into the torn of mighty deeds and the stain was nearly washed away. No shadow followed him. He had not entered the dark house. He had not had time to open the closet door. "'Will he ever look in?' I said to myself. Must his shadow find him some day?' But I could not answer my own questions. We travelled together for two days and I began to love him. It was plain that he suspected my story in some degree and I saw him once or twice looking curiously and anxiously at my attendant gloom which all this time had remained very obsequiously behind me. But I offered no explanation and he asked none. Shame at my neglect of his warning and a horror which shrunk from even alluding to its cause kept me silent. Till, on the evening of the second day, some noble words from my companion roused all my heart, and I was at the point of falling on his neck and telling him the whole story, seeking, if not for helpful advice, for of that I was hopeless, yet for the comfort of sympathy, when round slid the shadow and unwrapped my friend and I could not trust him. The glory of his brow vanished, the light of his eye grew cold and I held my peace. The next morning we parted. But the most dreadful thing of all was that I now began to feel something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, in a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances and shows me things in their true colour and form, and I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are, and if I live in a waste instead of a paradise I will live knowing where I live. But of this a certain exercise of his power which soon followed quite cured me, turning my feelings towards him once more into loathing and distrust. It was thus. One bright noon a little maiden joined me, coming through the wood in a direction at right angles to my path. She came along singing and dancing, happy as a child, though she seemed almost a woman. In her hands, now in one, now in another, she carried a small globe, bright and clear as the purest crystal. This seemed at once her plaything and her greatest treasure. At one moment you would have thought her utterly careless of it, and at another, overwhelmed with anxiety for its safety. But I believed she was taking care of it all the time, perhaps not least when least occupied about it. She stopped by me with a smile, and bade me good day with a sweetest voice. I felt a wonderful liking to the child, for she produced on me more the impression of a child, though my understanding told me differently. We talked a little, and then walked on together in the direction I had been pursuing. I asked her about the globe she carried, but getting no definite answer I held on my hand to take it. She drew back, and said, but smiling almost invitingly the while, You must not touch it. Then, after a moment's pause, or if you do it must be very gently. I touched it with a finger. A slight vibratory motion arose in it, accompanied or perhaps manifested by a faint sweet sound. I touched it again, and the sound increased. I touched it the third time. A tiny torn of harmony rolled out of the little globe. She would not let me touch it any more. We travelled on together all that day. She left me when twilight came on, but next day, at noon, she met me as before, and again we travelled till evening. The third day she came once more at noon, and we walked on together. Now, though we had talked about a great many things connected with Fairyland, and the life she had led hither too, I had never been able to learn anything about the globe. This day, however, as we went on, the shadow glided round and enwrapped the maiden. It could not change her, but my desire to know about the globe which in its gloom began to waver as with an inward light and to shoot out flashes of many-coloured flame, grew irresistible. I put out both my hands and laid hold of it. It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly increased till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the globe trembled and quivered and throbbed between my hands. I had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me. Yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and at last her tears. The music went on growing in intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapor broke upwards from out of it, then turned as if blown sideways and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness. She held fast the fragments which I had abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction when she had come, wailing like a child and crying, You have broken my globe! My globe is broken! My globe is broken! I followed her in the hope of comforting her, but had not pursued her far before a sudden cold gust of wind bowed the treetops above us and swept through their stems around us. A great cloud overspread the day and a fierce tempest came on in which I lost sight of her. It lies heavy on my heart to this hour. At night ere I fall asleep often, whatever I may be thinking about, I suddenly hear her voice crying out, You have broken my globe! My globe is broken! My globe! Here I will mention one more strange thing, but whether this peculiarity was owing to my shadow at all I am not able to assure myself. I came to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather avoided than sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I addressed them. But at last I observed that whenever I came within a certain distance of any individuals the whole appearance of the person began to change, and this change increased in degree as I approached. When I receded to the former distance the former appearance was restored. The nature of the change was grotesque, following no fixed rule. The nearest resemblance to it that I know is the distortion produced in your countenance when you look at it as reflected in a concave or convex surface, say, either side of a bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I first became aware in rather a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty girl who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me. For some days my companion shadow had been less obtrusive than usual, and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment that, although I had cause enough besides me to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is that she was quite aware of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my expense. For one evening, after some gesting and railery, she somehow or other provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous. The pretty mouth was elongated and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of six simultaneous kisses. I started back and bewildered dismay. She burst into the merriest fit of laughter and ran from the room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change operated between me and all the other villagers, and that, to feel I was in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for me to discover and observe the right focal distance between myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done all went pleasantly enough. Whether when I happened to neglect this precaution I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance I did not ascertain. But I presumed that the alteration was common to the approximating parties. I was likewise unable to determine whether I was necessary party to the production of this strange transformation or whether it took place as well under the given circumstances between the inhabitants themselves. CHAPTER X From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow to guide the outcasts to the land of woe. Our earth won little toiling streamly yields, to guide the wanderers to the happy fields. After leaving this village where I had rested for nearly a week I traveled through a desert region of dry sand and glittering rocks peopled principally by goblin fairies. When I first entered their domains and indeed whenever I fell in with another tribe of them they began mocking me with offered handfuls of gold and jewels making hideous grimaces at me and performing the most antique homage as if they thought I expected reverence and meant to humor me like a maniac. But ever as soon as one cast his eyes on the shadow behind me he made a writhe face, partly of pity, partly of contempt, and looked ashamed as if he had been caught doing something inhuman. Then throwing down his handful of gold and ceasing all his grimaces he stood aside to let me pass in peace and made signs to his companions to do the like. I had no inclination to observe them much, for the shadow was in my heart as well as at my heels. I walked listlessly and almost hopelessly along till I arrived one day at a small spring, which bursting cool from the heart of a sun-heated rock flowed somewhat southwards from the direction I had been taking. I drank of the spring, and found myself wonderfully refreshed. A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my heart. It was born in a desert, but it seemed to say to itself, I will flow and sing and lave my banks till I make my desert a paradise. I thought I could not do better than follow it and see what it made of it. So down with the stream I went over rocky lands, burning with sunbeams. But the rivulet flowed not far before a few blades of grass appeared on its banks, and then here and there a stunted bush. Sometimes it disappeared altogether underground, and after I had wandered some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again singing, sometimes far away to my right or left, amongst new rocks over which it made new cataracts of watery melodies. The verger on its banks increased as it flowed. Other streams joined it, and at last, after many days' travel, I found myself one gorgeous summer evening resting by the side of a broad river with a glorious horse-chestnut tree towering above me and dropping its blossoms, milk-white and rosy red all about me. As I sat, a gush of joy sprang forth in my heart and overflowed in my eyes. Through my tears the whole landscape glimmered in such bewildering loveliness that I felt as if I were entering fairy land for the first time, and some loving hand were waiting to cool my head and a loving word to warm my heart. Roses, wild roses everywhere. So plentiful were they, they not only perfumed the air they seemed to dye it in a faint rose hue. The color floated abroad with the scent and clone and spread until the whole west blushed and glowed with the gathered incense of roses, and my heart fainted with longing in my bosom. Could I but see the spirit of the earth as I saw once the indwelling woman of the beech-tree, and my beauty of the pale marble I should be content. Content! Oh, how gladly would I die of the light of her eyes! Yea, I would cease to be if that would bring me one word of love from the one mouth. The twilight sank around and enfolded me with sleep. I slept as I had not slept for months. I did not awake till late in the morning, when, refreshed in body and mind, I rose as from the death that wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow. Again I followed the stream, now climbing a steep rocky bank that hemmed it in, now wading through the long grasses and wild flowers in its path, now through meadows, and anon through woods that crowded down to the very lip of the water. At length in a nook of the river, gloomy with the weight of overhanging foliage, and still and deep as a soul in which the torrent eddies of pain have hollowed a great gulf, and then, subsiding in violence, have left it full of emotionless, fathomless sorrow. I saw a little boat lying. So still was the water here that the boat needed no fastening. It lay as if someone had just stepped ashore and would in a moment return. But as there were no signs of presence and no track through the thick bushes, and moreover, as I was in fairyland where one does very much as he pleases, I forced my way to the brink, stepped into the boat, pushed it, with the help of the tree branches, out into the stream, lay down in the bottom, and let my boat and me float with as the stream would carry us. I seemed to lose myself in the great flow of sky above me unbroken in its infinitude, except when, now and then, coming near the shore at a bend in the river, a tree would sweep its mighty heads silently above mine, and glide away back into the past, never more to fling its shadow over me. I fell asleep in this cradle, in which Mother Nature was rocking her weary child, and while I slept, the sun slept not, but went round his arched way. When I awoke, he slept in the waters, and I went on my silent path beneath a round silvery moon, and a pale moon looked up from the floor of the great blue cave that lay in the abysmal silence beneath. Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? Not so grand or strong it may be, but always lovelier. Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn toward itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room and a poem when I turn to the glass. And this reminds me, while I write, of a strange story which I read in the fairy palace, and of which I will try to make a feeble memorial in its place. In whatever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may be sure, that this feeling is no cheat, for there is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, that we may but in part lay hold of the meaning. Even the memories of past pain are beautiful, and past delights, though beheld only through clefts in the great clouds of sorrow, are lovely as fairer land. But how have I wandered into the deeper fairy land of the soul, while as yet I only float towards the fairy palace of fairy land? The moon, which is the lovelier memory, or reflex of the down-gone sun, the joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding night, had wrapped me away. I sat up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me, through which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined to the great river. The little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and fell with a plash as of molten silver, breaking the image of the moon into a thousand morsels, fusing again into one, as the ripples of laughter die into the still face of joy. The sleeping woods in undefined massiveness, the water that flowed in its sleep, and above all the enchantress moon, which had cast them all with her pale eye, into the charmed slumber, sank into my soul, and I felt as if I had died in a dream and should never more awake. From this I was partly aroused by a glimmering of white that, through the trees on the left, vaguely crossed my vision as I gazed upwards. But the trees again hid the object, and at the moment some strange melodious bird took up its song and sang, not an ordinary birdsong, with constant repetitions of the same melody, but what sounded like a continuous strain in which one thought was expressed, deepening in intensity as evolved in progress. It sounded like a welcome already overshadowed with a coming farewell. As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed sorrow, stooping in wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with sorrow for very love. As the song concluded, the stream bore my little boat with a gentle sweep round a bend of the river, and low, on a broad lawn which rose from the water's edge with a long green slope, to a clear elevation from which the trees receded on all sides, stood a stately palace glimmering ghostly in the moonshine. It seemed to be built throughout of the whitest marble. There was no reflection of moonlight from windows. There seemed to be none. So there was no cold glitter. Only, as I said, a ghostly shimmer. Numberless shadows tempered the shine from column and balcony and tower. From everywhere galleries ran along the face of the buildings. Wings were extended in many directions, and numberless openings through which the moonbeams vanished into the interior, and which served both for doors and windows, had their separate balconies in front communicating with the common gallery that rose on its own pillars. Of course I did not discover all this from the river and in the moonlight. But, though I was there for many days, I did not succeed in mastering the inner topography of the building, so extensive and complicated was it. Here I wished to land, but the boat had no oars on board. However, I found that a plank serving for a seat was unfastened, and with that I brought the boat to the bank and scrambled on shore. Deep, soft turf sank beneath my feet as I went up the ascent towards the palace. When I reached it I saw that it stood on a great platform of marble with an ascent by broad stairs of the same all around it. Arrived on the platform I found there was an extensive outlook over the forest which, however, was rather veiled than revealed by the moonlight. Entering by a wide gateway but without gates into an inner court, bounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleries above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle throwing up a lofty column of water which fell, with a noise as of the fusion of all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath, overflowing which it ran into a single channel towards the interior of the building. Although the moon was by this time so low in the west the not array of her light fell into the court over the height of the surrounding buildings, yet was the court lighted by a second reflex from the sun of other lands. For the top of the column of water, just as it spread to fall, caught the moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp hung high in the night air, threw a dim memory of light, as it were, over the court below. This court was paved in diamonds of white and red marble. According to my customs since I entered fairyland, of taking for a guide whatever I first found moving in any direction, I followed the stream from the basin of the fountain. It led me to a great open door beneath the ascending steps of which it ran through a low arch and disappeared. Entering here, I found myself in a great hall, surrounded with white pillars and paved with black and white. This I could see by the moonlight, which, from the other side, streamed through open windows into the hall. Its height I could not distinctly see. As soon as I entered, I had the feeling so common to me in the woods that there were others there besides myself, though I could see no one and heard no sound to indicate a presence. Since my visit to the Church of Darkness, my power of seeing the fairies of the higher orders had gradually diminished, until it had almost ceased. But I could frequently believe in their presence while unable to see them. Still, although I had company and doubtless of a safe kind, it seemed rather dreary to spend the night in an empty marble hall, however beautiful, especially as the moon was near the going down and it would soon be dark. So I began at the place where I entered and walked round the hall, looking for some door or passage that might lead me to a more hospitable chamber. As I walked, as I walked, I was deliciously haunted with the feeling that behind some one of the seemingly innumerable pillars, one who loved me was waiting for me. Then I thought she was following me from pillar to pillar as I went along. But no arms came out of the faint moonlight and no sigh assured me of her presence. At length I came to an open corridor into which I turned. Notwithstanding that, in doing so, I left the light behind. Along this I walked with outstretched hands, groping my way till arriving at another corridor which seemed to strike off at right angles to that in which I was. I saw at the end a faintly glimmering light, too pale even for moonshine, resembling rather astray phosphorescence. However, where everything was white, a little light went a great way. So I walked on to the end in a long corridor it was. When I came up to the light I found that it proceeded from what looked like silver letters upon a door of ebony. And, to my surprise, even in the home of wonder itself, the letters formed the words, the chamber of Sir Anadas. Although I had as yet no right to the honors of a knight, I ventured to conclude that the chamber was indeed intended for me, and opening the door without hesitation, I entered. Any doubt as to whether I was right in doing so was soon dispelled. What to my dark eyes seemed a blaze of light burst upon me? A fire of large pieces of some sweet-scented wood, supported by dogs of silver, was burning on the hearth, and a bright lamp stood on a table in the midst of a plentiful meal, apparently awaiting my arrival. But what surprised me more than all was that the room was in every respect a copy of my own room, the room once the little stream from my basin had led me into fairy-land. There was the very carpet of grass and moss and daisies which I had myself designed, the curtains of pale blue silk that fell like a cataract over the windows, the old-fashioned bed with the chintz furniture on which I had slept from boyhood. Now I shall sleep, I said to myself. My shadow dares not come here. I sat down to the table and began to help myself to the good things before me with confidence, and now I found, as in many instances before, how true the fairy tales are, for I was waited on all the time of my meal by invisible hands. I had scarcely to do more than look towards anything I wanted when it was brought me, just as if it had come to me of itself. My glass was kept filled with the wine I had chosen until I looked towards another bottle or decanter, when a fresh glass was substituted and the other wine supplied. When I had eaten and drank more heartily and joyfully than ever since I had entered fairy-land, the whole was removed by several attendants of whom some were male and some female as I thought I could distinguish from the way the dishes were lifted from the table and the motion with which they were carried out of the room. As soon as they were all taken away I heard a sound as of the shutting of a door and knew that I was left alone. I sat long by the fire, meditating, and wondering how it would all end, and when at length wearyed with thinking I betook myself to my own bed. It was half with the hope that, when I awoke in the morning I should awake not only in my own room but in my own castle also, and that I should walk out upon my own native soil and find that fairy-land was, after all, only a vision of the night. The sound of the falling waters of the fountain floated me into oblivion. CHAPTER X A wilderness of building, sinking far, and self-withdrawn into a real wonder's depth, far sinking into splendor, without end, fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, with alabaster domes and silver spires and blazing terrace upon terrace high up lifted. Wordsworth. But when, after a sleep which, although dreamless, yet left behind in a sense of past blessedness, I awoke in the full morning I found indeed that the room was still my own, but that it looked broad upon an unknown landscape of forest and hill and dale on the one side, and on the other upon the marble court, with the great fountain the crest of which now flashed glorious in the sun, and cast on the pavement beneath a shower of faint shadows from the waters that fell from it into the marble basin below. Agreeably to all authentic accounts of the treatment of travelers and fairy-land, I found by my bedside a complete suit of fresh clothing, just such as I was in the habit of wearing, for though varied sufficiently from the one removed it was yet incomplete accordance with my tastes. I dressed myself in this and went out. The whole palace shone like silver in the sun. The marble was partly dull and partly polished, and every pinnacle, dome, and turret ended in a ball, or cone, or cusp of silver. It was like frostwork and two dazzling in the sun for earthly eyes like mine. I will not attempt to describe the environs, save by saying that all the pleasures to be found in the most varied and artistic arrangement of wood and river, lawn and wild forest, garden and shrubbery, rocky hill and luxurious veil, and living creatures wild and tame, and gorgeous birds, scattered fountains, little streams and reedy lakes. All were here. Some parts of the palace itself I shall have occasion to describe more minutely. For this whole morning I never thought of my demon shadow, and not till the weariness which supervened on delight brought it again to my memory did I look round to see if it was behind me. It was scarcely discernible. But its presence, however faintly revealed, sent a pain to my heart, for the pain of which not all the beauties around me could compensate. It was followed, however, by the comforting reflection that, per adventure, I might here find the magic word of power to banish the demon and set me free, so that I should no longer be a man beside myself. The Queen of Fairyland thought I must dwell here. Surely she will put forth her power to deliver me and send me singing through the further gates of her country back to my own land. Shadow of me, I said, which art not me, but which representest thyself to me is me. Here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness. Here I may find a blessing which will fall on thee as a curse, and damn thee to the blackness whence thou hast emerged and bidden. I said this, stretched at length on the slope of the lawn above the river, and as the hope arose within me the sun came forth from a light fleecy cloud that swept across his face, and hill and dale and the great river winding on through the still mysterious forest, flashed back as rays as with a silent shout of joy. All nature lived and glowed. The very earth grew warm beneath me, magnificent dragonfly went past me like an arrow from a bow, and a whole concert of birds burst into choral song. The heat of the sun soon became too intense even for passive support. I therefore rose and sought the shelter of one of the arcades. Wandering along from one to the other of these, wherever my heedless steps led me, and wondering wherever at the simple magnificence of the building, I arrived at another hall, the roof of which was of a pale blue, spangled with constellations of silver stars, and supported by parfury pillars of a paler red than ordinary. In this house, I may remark in passing, silver seemed everywhere preferred to gold, and such was the purity of the air that it showed nowhere signs of tarnishing. The whole of the floor of this hall, except a narrow path behind the pillars, paved with black, was hollowed into a huge basin, many feet deep and filled with the purest, most liquid and radiant water. The sides of the basin were white marble, and the bottom was paved with all kinds of refulgent stones of every shape and hue. In their arrangement you would have supposed at first sight that there was no design, for they seemed to lies have cast there from careless and playful hands. But it was the most harmonious confusion, and as I looked at the play of their colors, especially when the waters were in motion, I came at last to feel as if not one little pebble could be displaced without injuring the effect of the whole. Beneath this floor of water lay the reflection of the blue inverted roof, fretted with its silver stars like a second deeper sea, clasping and upholding the first. The fairy bath was probably fed from the fountain in the court, led by an irresistible desire I undressed and plunged into the water. It clothed me as with a new sense and its object both in one. The waters lay so close to me they seemed to enter and revive my heart. I rose to the surface, shook the water from my hair and swam as in a rainbow amid the corissations of the gems below seen through the agitation caused by my motion. Then with open eyes I dived and swam beneath the surface, and here was a new wonder. For the basin, thus beheld, appeared to extend on all sides like a sea, with here and there groups as of ocean rocks hollowed by ceaseless billows into wondrous caves and grotesque pinnacles. Around the caves grew seaweeds of all hues and the corals glowed between. While far off I saw the glimmer of what seemed to be creatures of human form at home in the waters. I thought I had been enchanted, and that when I rose to the surface I should find myself miles from land swimming alone upon a heaving sea. But when my eyes emerged from the waters I saw above me the blue-spangled vault and the red pillars around. I dived again and found myself once more in the heart of a great sea. I then arose and swam to the edge, where I got out easily for the water reached the very brim and as I drew near washed and tiny waves over the black marble border. I dressed and went out, deeply refreshed. And now I began to discern faint, gracious forms here and there throughout the building. Some walked together in earnest conversation. Others strayed alone. Some stood in groups as if looking at and talking about a picture or a statue. None of them heeded me. Nor were they plainly visible to my eyes. Sometimes a group or single individual would fade entirely out of the realm of my vision as I gazed. When evening came and the moon arose, clear as a round of a horizon-sea, when the sun hangs over it in the west, I began to see them all more plainly, especially when they came between me and the moon, and yet more especially when I myself was in the shade. But even then I sometimes saw only the passing wave of a white robe or a lovely arm or neck gleamed by in the moonshine, or white feet went walking alone over the moony sward. Nor, I grieved to say, did I ever come much nearer to these glorious beings or ever look upon the Queen of Fairies herself. My destiny ordered otherwise. In this palace of marble and silver and fountains and moonshine I spent many days, weighted upon constantly in my room with everything desirable and bathing daily in the fairy bath. All this time I was little troubled with my demon shadow. I had a vague feeling that he was somewhere about the palace. But it seemed as if the hope that I should in this place be finally freed from his hated presence had sufficed to banish him for a time. How and where I found him I shall soon have to relate. The third day after my arrival I found the library of the palace, and here all the time I remained I spent most of the middle of the day. For it was not to mention far greater attractions a luxurious retreat from the noontide sun. During the mornings and afternoons I wandered about the lovely neighborhood or lay lost and delicious daydreams beneath some mighty tree on the open lawn. My evenings were by and by spent in a part of the palace the account of which and of my adventures in connection with it I must yet postpone for a little. The library was a mighty hall, lighted from the roof, which was formed of something like glass, vaulted over in a single piece, and stained throughout with a great mysterious picture in gorgeous coloring. The walls were lined from floor to roof with books and books, most of them in ancient bindings, but some in strange new fashions which I had never seen and which were I to make the attempt I could ill describe. All around the walls in front of the books ran galleries and rows communicating by stairs. These galleries were built of all kinds of colored stones, all sorts of marble and granite, with porphyry, jasper, lapis lazuli, agate, and various others were ranged in wonderful melody of successive colors. Although the material then of which these galleries and stairs were built rendered necessary a certain degree of massiveness in the construction, yet such was the size of the place that they seemed to run along the walls like cords. Over some parts of the library descended curtains of silk of various dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there, and I felt somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture to look within them. But the use of the other books seemed free, and day after day I came to the library, threw myself on one of the many sumptuous eastern carpets which lay here and there on the floor, and red, and red until weary. If that can be designated as weariness which was rather the faintness of rapturous delight, or until sometimes the failing of the light invited me to go abroad in the hope that a cool, gentle breeze might have arisen to bathe with an airy invigorating bath, the limbs which the glow of the burning spirit within had withered no less than the glow of the blazing sun without. One peculiarity of these books, or at least most of those I looked into, I must take a somewhat vain attempt to describe. If, for instance, it was a book of metaphysics I opened, I had scarcely read two pages before I seemed to myself to be pondering over discovered truth and constructing the intellectual machine whereby to communicate the discovery to my fellow men. With some books, however, of this nature it seemed rather as if the process was removed yet a great way further back, and I was trying to find the root of a manifestation, the spiritual truth once a material vision sprang, or to combine two propositions, both apparently true, either at once or in different remembered moods, and to find the point in which their invisibly converging lines would unite in one, revealing a truth higher than either and differing from both, though so far from being opposed to either that it was that whence each derived its life and power, or if the book was one of the travels I found myself the traveler. New lands, fresh experiences, novel customs rose around me. I walked, I discovered, I fought, I suffered, I rejoiced in my success. Was it history? I was the chief actor therein. I suffered my own blame. I was glad in my own praise. With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story, for I took the place of the character who was most like myself, and his story was mine. Until grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognizing the wall and roof around me and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. If the book was a poem, the words disappeared, or took the subordinate position of an accompaniment to the succession of forms and images that rose and vanished with a soundless rhythm and a hidden rhyme. In one, with a mystical title which I cannot recall, I read of a world that is not like ours. The wondrous account in such a feeble, fragmentary way is as possible to me I would willingly impart. Whether or not it was all a poem I cannot tell. But from the impulse I felt, when I first contemplated writing it, to break into rhyme, to which impulse I shall give way, if it comes upon me again, I think it must have been, partly at least, in verse. CHAPTER XII CHained is the spring. The night wind bold blows over the hard earth. Time is not more confused and cold, nor keeps more wintry mirth. Yet blow and roll the world about. Blow time, blow winter's wind, through chinks of time heaven peepeth out, and spring the frost behind. G.E.M. They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an inter-mundane relationship. The community of the center of all creation suggests an inter-radiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendor which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connections with the worlds around us than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and it may be with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides. Through the realms of the monarch sun creeps a world whose course had begun on a weary path with a weary pace before the earth sprang forth on her race, but many a time the earth had sped around the path she still must tread ere the elder planet on leaden wing once circled the court of the planet's king. There in that lonely and distant star the seasons are not as our seasons are, but many a year hath autumn to dress the trees in their matron loveliness. As long hath old winter in triumph to go, or beauty's dead in his vaults below, and many a year the spring doth wear combing the icicles from her hair. And summer, dear summer, hath years of June, with large white clouds and cool showers at noon, and a beauty that grows to await like grief till the burst of tears is the heart's relief. Children born when winter is king may never rejoice in the hoping spring, though their own heart buds are bursting with joy and the child hath grown to the girl or boy, but may die with cold and icy hours watching them ever in place of flowers. And some who awake from their primal sleep when the size of the summer through forests creep, live and love in our loved again, seek for pleasure and find its pain, sink to their last, their forsaken sleeping, with the same sweet odours around them creeping. Now the children there are not born as the children are born in worlds nearer to the sun, for they arrive no one knows how. A maiden walking alone hears a cry, for even there a cry is the first utterance, and searching about she findeth under an overhanging rock, or within a clump of bushes, or it may be betwixt gray stones on the side of a hill, or in any other sheltered and unexpected spot, a little child. This she taketh tenderly, and beareth home with joy, calling out, Mother, Mother, if so be that her mother lives, I have got a baby, I have found a child. All the household gathers round to see, where is it? What is it like? Where did you find it? And such like questions abounding. And thereupon she relates the whole story of the discovery, for by the circumstances, such as season of the year, time of the day, condition of the air, and such like, and especially, the peculiar and never-repeated aspect of the heavens and earth at the time, and the nature of the place of shelter wherein it is found, is determined, or at least indicated, the nature of the child thus discovered. Therefore at certain seasons and in certain states of the weather, according in part to their own fancy, the young women go out to look for children. They generally avoid seeking them, though they cannot help sometimes finding them in places and with circumstances uncongenial to their peculiar likings. But no sooner is a child found than its claim for protection and nurture obliterates all feeling of choice in the matter. Only however, in the season of summer which lasts so long, coming as it does after such long intervals, and mostly in the warm evenings about the middle of twilight, and principally in the woods and along the river-banks, do the maidens go looking for children just as children look for flowers. And ever, as the child grows, yea, more and more as he advances in years, will his face indicate to those who understand the spirit of nature and her utterances in the face of the world the nature of the place of his birth, and the other circumstances thereof, whether a clear morning sun guided his mother to the nook once issued the boy's low cry, or at eve the lonely maiden, for the same woman never finds a second, at least while the first lives, discovers the girl by the glimmer of her white skin, lying in a nest like that of the lark, amid long encircling grasses, and the upward gazing eyes of the lowly daisies. Whether the storm bowed the forest trees around, or the still frost fixed in silence the else flowing and babbling stream. After they grow up, the men and women are but little together. There is this peculiar difference between them which likewise distinguishes the women from those of the earth. The men alone have arms. The women have only wings. Resplendent wings are they, wherein they can shroud themselves from head to foot in a panoply of glistering glory. By these wings alone it may frequently be judged in what seasons and under what aspects they were born. From those that came in winter go great white wings, white as snow, the edge of every feather shining like the sheen of silver, so that they flash and glitter like frost in the sun. But underneath they are tinged with a faint pink or rose color. Those born in spring have wings of a brilliant green, green as grass, and towards the edges of the feathers are enameled like the surface of the grass blades. These again are white within. Those that are born in summer have wings of a deep rose color lined with pale gold, and those born in autumn have purple wings with a rich brown on the inside. But these colors are modified and altered in all varieties corresponding to the mood of the day and hour as well as the season of the year. And sometimes I found the various colors so interminkled that I could not determine even the season, though doubtless the hieroglyphic could be deciphered by more experienced eyes. One splendor in particular I remember, wings of deep carmine with an inner down of warm gray around a form of brilliant whiteness. She had been found as the sun went down through a low sea fog, casting crimson along a broad sea path into a little cave on the shore where a bathing maiden saw her lying. But though I speak of sun and fog and sea and shore, the world there is in some respects very different from the earth whereon men live. For instance, the waters reflect no forms. To the unaccustomed eye they appear if undisturbed like the surface of a dark metal, only that the latter would reflect indistinctly, whereas they reflect not at all except light which falls immediately upon them. This has a great effect in causing the landscapes to differ from those on the earth. On the stillest evening no tall ship on the sea sends a long wavering reflection almost to the feet of him on shore. The face of no maiden brightens at its own beauty in a still forest well, the sun and moon alone make a glitter on the surface. The sea is like a sea of death, ready to engulf and never to reveal, a visible shadow of oblivion. Yet the women sport in its waters like gorgeous sea birds, the men more rarely enter them. But on the contrary the sky reflects everything beneath it, as if it were built of water like ours. Of course, from its concavity there is some distortion of the reflected objects, yet wondrous combinations of form are often to be seen in the overhanging depth. And then it is not shaped so much like a round dome as the sky of the earth, but more of an egg shape, rises to a great towering height in the middle, appearing far more lofty than the other. When the stars come out at night it shows a mighty cupola, fretted with golden fires, wherein there is room for all tempests to rush and rave. One evening in early summer I stood with a group of men and women on a steep rock that overhung the sea. They were all questioning me about my world and the ways thereof. In making reply to one of their questions I was compelled to say that children are not born on earth as with them. Upon this I was assailed with the whole battery of inquiries, which at first I tried to avoid. But at last I was compelled in the vaguest manner I could invent to make some approach to the subject in question. Immediately a dim notion of what I meant seemed to dawn in the minds of most of the women. Some of them folded their great wings all around them as they generally do when in the least offended and stood erect and motionless. One spread out her rosy pinions and flashed from the promontory into the gulf at its foot. A great light shown in the eyes of one maiden who turned and walked slowly away with her purple and white wings half to spread behind her. She was found the next morning dead beneath a withered tree on a bare hillside some miles inland. They buried her where she lay, as is their custom, for before they die they instinctively search for a spot like the place of their birth, and having found one that satisfies them they lie down, fold their wings around them, if they be women, or cross their arms over their breasts if they are men, just as if they were going to sleep. And so sleep indeed. The sign or cause of coming death is an indescribable longing for something. They know not what, which seizes them and drives them into solitude, consuming them within till the body fails. When a youth and a maiden look too deep into each other's eyes this longing seizes and possesses them. But instead of drawing nearer to each other they wander away, each alone into solitary places, and die of their desire. But it seems to me that thereafter they are born babes upon our earth, where if when grown they find each other it goes well with them. If not it will seem to go ill. But of this I know nothing. When I told them that the women on the earth had not wings like them, but arms they stared, and said how bold and masculine they must look, not knowing that their wings glorious as they are, are but undeveloped arms. But see the power of this book that while recounting what I can recall of its contents I write as if myself visited the far off planet, learned its ways and appearances and conversed with its men and women. And so while writing it seemed to me that I had. The book goes on with the story of a maiden who, born at the close of autumn, and living in a long to her endless winter, set out at last to find the regions of spring. For as in our earth the seasons are divided over the globe, it begins something like this. She watched them dying for many a day, dropping from off the old trees away, one by one, or else in a shower crowding over the withered flower. For as if they had done some grievous wrong, the sun that had nursed them and loved them so long, grew weary of loving, and turning back hastened away on his southern track, and helplessly hung each shriveled leaf faded away with an idle grief. And the gusts of wind, sad autumn sighs, mournfully swept through their families, casting away with a helpless moan all that he yet might call his own, as the child when his bird is gone for ever, fling at the cage on the wandering river, and the giant trees as bare as death slowly bowed to the great wind's breath, and groaned with trying to keep from groaning amidst the young trees bending and moaning. And the ancient planet's mighty sea was heaving and falling most restlessly, and the tops of the waves were broken and white, tossing about to ease their might. And the river was striving to reach the main, and the ripple was hurrying back again. Nature lived in sadness now, sadness lived on the maiden's brow, as she watched with a fixed, half-conscious eye, one lonely leaf that trembled on high, till it dropped at last from the desolate bow. Sorrow, oh sorrow, to his winter now! And her tears gushed forth, though it was but a leaf, for little will loose the swollen fountain of grief. When up to the lip the water goes, it needs but a drop, and it overflows. Oh, many and many a dreary year must pass away or the buds appear. Many a night of darksome sorrow yield to the light of a joyless morrow. Air birds again on the clothed trees shall fill the branches with melodies. She will dream of meadows, with wakeful streams, of wavy grass and the sunny beams, of hidden wells that soundless spring, hoarding their joy as a holy thing, of founts that tell it all day long to the listening woods with exultant song. She will dream of evenings that die into nights where each sense is filled with its own delights, and the soul is still as the vaulted sky lulled with an inner harmony. And the flowers give out to the dewy night, changed into perfume the gathered light, and the darkness sinks upon all their host till the suns sail up on the eastern coast. She will wake and see the branches bare, weaving a net in the frozen air. The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with winteriness, she traveled towards the southern regions of her globe to meet the spring on its slow way northwards, and how, after many sad adventures, many disappointed hopes and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found at last one stormy afternoon in a leafless forest a single snow drop growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, still and peaceful as a snow drop, was born in the earth within a fixed season from that stormy afternoon. CHAPTER XIII I saw a ship sailing upon the sea, deeply laden a ship could be, but not so deep as in love I am, for I care not whether I sink or swim. OLD BALLAD But love is such a mystery I cannot find it out, for when I think I am best resolved, I then am in most doubt. Sir John Suckling. One story I will try to reproduce. But alas, it is like trying to reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered leaves. In the fairy book everything was just as it should be, though whether in words or something else I cannot tell. It glowed and flashed the thoughts upon the soul with such a power that the medium disappeared from the consciousness, and it was occupied only with the things themselves. My representation of it must resemble a translation from a rich and powerful language capable of embodying the thoughts of a splendidly developed people into the meager and half-articulate speech of a savage tribe. Of course, while I read it, I was Cosmo, and his history was mine. Yet all the time I seemed to have a kind of double consciousness and a story, a double meaning. Sometimes it seemed only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of universal life, wherein two souls loving each other and longing to come nearer do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly. As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins, as into the solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea, as the lights and influences of the upper world sink silently through the earth's atmosphere, so Doth Ferry invade the world of men and sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced. Cosmo von Weerstahl was a student at the University of Prague. Though of a noble family, he was poor and prided himself upon the independence that poverty gives. For what will not a man pride himself upon when he cannot get rid of it? A favorite with his fellow students he yet had no companions, and none of them had ever crossed the threshold of his lodging in the top of one of the highest houses in the Old Town. Indeed, the secret of much of that complacence which recommended him to his fellows was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening he could but take himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies and reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to his course at the University, embraced some less commonly known and approved. For in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa, along with others less red and more obstruous. As yet, however, he had followed these researches only from curiosity and had turned them to no practical purpose. His lodging consisted of one large low-sealed room, singularly bare of furniture, for besides a couple of wooden chairs, a couch which served for dreaming on both day and night, and a great press of black oak. There was very little in the room that could be called furniture. But curious instruments were heaped in the corners, and in one stood a skeleton, half leaning against the wall, half supported by a string about its neck. One of its hands, all of fingers, rested on the heavy pommel of a great sword that stood beside it. Various weapons were scattered about over the floor, the walls were utterly bare of adornment, for the few strange things, such as a large dried bat with wings disbred, the skin of a porcupine and a stuffed sea-mouse, could hardly be reckoned as such. But although as fancy delighted in vagaries like these, he indulged his imagination with far different fare. His mind had never yet been filled with an absorbing passion, but it lay like a still twilight open to any wind, whether the low breath that wafts but odours or the storm that bows the great trees till they strain and creak. He saw everything as through a rose-coloured glass. When he looked from his window on the street below, not a maiden passed, but she moved as in a story, and drew his thoughts after her till she disappeared in the vista. When he walked in the streets he always felt as if reading a tale, into which he sought to weave every face of interest that went by, and every sweet voice swept his soul as with the wing of a passing angel. He was, in fact, a poet without words. The more absorbed and endangered that the springing waters were damned back into his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew and swelled and undermined. He used a lie on his hard couch and read a tale or a poem till the book dropped from his hand. But he dreamed on, he knew not whether awake or asleep, until the opposite roof grew upon his sense and turned golden in the sunrise. Then he arose too, and the impulses of vigorous youth kept him ever active, either in study or in sport, until again the clothes of the day left him free, and the world of night which had lain drowned in the cataract of the day rose up in his soul with all its stars and dim-seen phantom shapes. But this could hardly last long. Some one form a sooner or later step within the charmed circle, enter the house of life, and compel the bewildered magician to kneel and worship. One afternoon, towards dusk, he was wandering dreamily in one of the principal streets when a fellow student aroused him by a slap on the shoulder and asked him to accompany him into a little back alley to look at some old armor which he had taken a fancy to possess. Cosmo was considered an authority in every matter pertaining to arms, ancient or modern. In the use of weapons none of the students could come near him, and his practical acquaintance with some had principally contributed to establish his authority in reference to all. He accompanied him willingly. They entered a narrow alley and fence, a dirty little court, where a low arched door emitted them into a heterogeneous assemblage of everything musty and dusty and old that could well be imagined. His verdict on the armor was satisfactory and his companion at once concluded the purchase. As they were leaving the place Cosmo's eye was attracted by an old mirror of an elliptical shape which leaned against the wall covered with dust. Around it was some curious carving which he could see but very indistinctly by the glimmering light which the owner of the shop carried in his hand. It was this carving that attracted his attention. At least so it appeared to him. He left the place, however, with his friend taking no further notice of it. They walked together to the main street where they parted and took opposite directions. No sooner was Cosmo left alone than the thought of the curious old mirror returned to him. A strong desire to see it more plainly arose within him and he directed his steps once more towards the shop. The owner opened the door when he knocked as if he had expected him. He was a little old withered man with a hooked nose and burning eyes constantly in a slow, restless motion and looking here and there as if after something that eluded them. Pretending to examine several other articles Cosmo at last approached the mirror and requested to have it taken down. Take it down yourself, master. I cannot reach it, said the old man. Cosmo took it down carefully when he saw that the carving was indeed delicate and costly, being both of admirable design and execution, containing with all many devices which seemed to embody some meaning to which he had no clue. This, naturally, in one of his tastes and temperament, increased the interest he felt in the old mirror, so much indeed that he now longed to possess it in order to study its frame at his leisure. He pretended, however, to want it only for use, and saying he feared the plate could be of little service as it was rather old, he brushed away a little of the dust from its face, expecting to see a dull reflection within. His surprise was great when he found the reflection brilliant, revealing a glass not only uninjured by age but wondrously clear and perfect, should the whole correspond to this part, even for one newly from the hands of the maker. He asked carelessly what the owner wanted for the thing. The old man replied by mentioning a sum of money far beyond the reach of poor Cosmo, who proceeded to replace the mirror where it stood before. You think the price too high, said the old man. I do not know that it is too much for you to ask, replied Cosmo, but it is far too much for me to give. The old man held up his light towards Cosmo's face. I like your look, said he. Cosmo could not return the compliment. In fact, now he looked closely at him for the first time, he felt a kind of repugnance to him, mingled with a strange feeling of doubt whether a man or a woman stood before him. What is your name, he continued. Cosmo von Weerstahl. Ah! ah! I thought as much. I see your father in you. I knew your father very well, young sir. I dare say in some odd corners of my house you might find some old things with his crest and cipher upon them still. Well, I like you. You shall have the mirror at the fourth part of what I ask for it, but upon one condition. What is that? said Cosmo, for although the price was still a great deal for him to give, he could just manage it, and the desire to possess the mirror had increased to an altogether uncountable degree since it had seemed beyond his reach. That if you should ever want to get rid of it again, you will let me have the first offer. Certainly replied Cosmo with a smile, adding, a moderate condition indeed. On your honour, insisted the seller. On my honour, said the buyer, and the bargain was concluded. I will carry it home for you, said the old man, as Cosmo took it in his hands. No, no, I will carry it myself, said he, for he had a peculiar dislike for revealing his residence to any one, and more especially to this person to whom he felt every moment a greater antipathy. Just as you please, said the old creature, and muttered to himself as he held his light at the door to show him out of the court. Sold for the sixth time. I wonder what will be the opt-shot of it this time. I should think my lady had enough of it by now. Cosmo carried his prize carefully home, but all the way he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was watched and dogged. Finally he looked about, but saw nothing to justify his suspicions. Indeed, the streets were too crowded and too ill-lighted to expose very readily a careful spy if such there should be at his heels. He reached his lodging in safety and leaned his purchase against the wall, rather relieved, strong as he was, to be rid of its weight. Then lighting his pipe threw himself on the couch, and was soon lapped in the folds of one of his haunting dreams. He returned home earlier than usual the next day and fixed the mirror to the wall over the hearth at one end of his long room. He then carefully wiped away the dust from its face, and clear as the water of a sunny spring the mirror shone out from beneath the envious covering. But his interest was chiefly occupied with the curious carving of the frame. This he cleaned as well as he could with the brush, and then he proceeded to a minute examination of its various parts in the hope of discovering some index to the intention of the carver. In this, however, he was unsuccessful, and at length, pausing with some weariness and disappointment, he gazed vacantly for a few moments into the depth of the reflected room. But ere long he said, half aloud, What a strange thing a mirror is, and what a wondrous affinity exists between it and a man's imagination. For this room of mine, as I behold it in the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of art, and the very representing of it to me has clothed with interest that which was otherwise hard and bare, just as one sees with the light upon the stage the representation of a character from which one would escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome. But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and appealing to the imagination which dwells apart reveals nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child whose everyday life, fearless and unambitious meets the true import of the wonder-teaming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning? That's skeleton now. I almost fear it, standing there so still with eyes only for the unseen like a watchtower looking across all the waist of this busy world into the quiet regions of rest beyond. And yet I know every bone and every join in it as well as my own fist, and that old battle-axe looks as if in any moment it might be caught up by a mailed hand and borne forth by the mighty arm go crashing through cask and skull and brain invading the unknown with yet another bewildered ghost. I should like to live in that room if I could only get into it. Scarcely had the half-molded words floated from him as he stood gazing into the mirror when, striking him as with the flash of amazement that fixed him in his posture, noiseless and unannounced, glided suddenly through the door into the reflected room with stately motion yet reluctant and faltering step the graceful form of a woman, clothed all in white. Her back only was visible as she walked slowly up to the couch and the further end of the room, on which she laid herself weirdly, turning towards him a face of unutterable loveliness, in which suffering and dislike and a sense of compulsion strangely mingled with the beauty. He stood without the power of motion for some moments with his eyes irrevocably fixed upon her, and even after he was conscious of the ability to move he could not summon up courage to turn and look on her face to face in the veritable chamber in which she stood. At length, with a sudden effort in which the exercise of the will was so pure that it seemed involuntary, he turned his face to the couch. It was vacant. In bewilderment, mingled with terror, he turned again to the mirror. There on the reflected couch lay the exquisite lady form. She lay with closed eyes whence two large tears were just welling from beneath the veiling lids. Still is death saved for the convulsive motion of her bosom. Cosmo himself could not have described what he felt. His emotions were of a kind that destroyed consciousness and could never be clearly recalled. He could not help standing yet by the mirror and keeping his eyes fixed on the lady though he was painfully aware of his rudeness, and feared every moment that she would open hers and meet his fixed regard. But he was, ere long, a little relieved, for after a while her eyelids slowly rose and her eyes remained uncovered but unemployed for a time. And when at length they began to wander about the room as if languidly seeking to make some acquaintance with her environment, they were never directed towards him. It seemed nothing but what was in the mirror could affect her vision, and therefore, if she saw him at all, there could only be his back which, of necessity, was turned towards her in the glass. The two figures in the mirror could not meet face to face except he turned and looked at her, present in his room, and as she was not there, he concluded that if he were to turn towards the part in his room corresponding to that in which she lay, his reflection would either be invisible to her altogether, or at least it must appear to her to gaze vacantly towards her, and no meeting of the eyes would produce the impression of spiritual proximity. By and by her eyes fell upon the skeleton and he saw her shudder and close them. She did not open them again but signs of her pugnance continued evident on her countenance. Cosmo would have removed the obnoxious thing at once, but he feared to discompose her yet more by the assertion of his presence which the act would involve. So he stood and watched her. The eyelids yet shrouded the eyes, as a costly case that jewels within. The troubled expression gradually faded from the countenance, leaving only a faint sorrow behind. The feature settled into an unchanging expression of rest, and by these signs in the slow regular motion of her breathing Cosmo knew that she slept. He could now gaze on her without embarrassment. He saw that her figure, dressed in the simplest robe of white, was worthy of her face and so harmonious that either the delicately molded foot or any finger of the equally delicate hand was an index to the whole. As she lay, her whole form manifested the relaxation of perfect repose. He gazed till he was weary and at last seated himself near the newfound shrine, and mechanically took up a book, like one who watches by a sick bed. But his eyes gathered no thoughts from the page before him. His intellect had been stunned by the bold contradiction to its face of all its experience, and now lay passive without assertion or speculation or even conscious astonishment, while his imagination sent one wild dream of blessedness after another coursing through his soul. How long he sat he knew not, but at length he roused himself, rose, and trembling in every portion of his frame looked again into the mirror. She was gone. The mirror reflected faithfully what his room presented and nothing more. It stood there like a golden setting once the central jewel has been stolen away, like a night sky without the glory of its stars. She had carried with her all the strangeness of the reflected room. It had sunk to the level of the one without. But when the first pangs of his disappointment had passed, Cosmo began to comfort himself with the hope that she might return, perhaps the next evening, at the same hour, resolving that if she did she should not at least be scared by the hateful skeleton. He removed that and several other articles of questionable appearance into a recess by the side of the hearth once they could not possibly cast any reflection into the mirror. And having made his poor room as tidy as he could, sought the solace of the open sky and of a night wind that had begun to blow, for he could not rest where he was. When he returned, somewhat composed, he could hardly prevail with himself to lie down on his bed, for he could not help feeling as if she had lain upon it, and for him to lie there now would be something like sacrilege. However, weariness prevailed, and laying himself on the couch, dressed as he was, he slept till day. With a beating heart beating till he could hardly breathe, he stood in dumb hope before the mirror on the following evening. Again the reflected room shone as through a purple vapor in the gathering twilight. Everything seemed wading like himself for a coming splendor to glorify its poor earthliness with the presence of a heavenly joy. And just as the room vibrated with the strokes of the neighboring church bell, announcing the hour of six, inglided the pale beauty, and again laid herself on the couch. Poor Cosmo nearly lost his senses with delight. She was there once more. Her eyes sought the corner where the skeleton had stood, and a faint gleam of satisfaction crossed her face, apparently at seeing it empty. She looked suffering still, but there was less of discomfort expressed in her countenance than there had been the night before. She took more notice of the things about her, and seemed to gaze with some curiosity on the strange apparatus, standing here and there in her room. At length, however, drowsiness seemed to overtake her, and again she fell asleep. Resolved not to lose sight of her this time, Cosmo watched the sleeping form. Her slumber was so deep and absorbing that a fascinating repose seemed to pass contagiously from her to him as he gazed upon her. And he started as if from a dream when the lady moved, and without opening her eyes rose and passed from the room with the gait of a some nambulist. Cosmo was now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a secret treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden horde, the virtuoso his pet ring, the student his rare book, the poet his favorite haunt, the lover his secret drawer. But Cosmo had a mirror with a lovely lady in it. And now that he knew by the skeleton that she was affected by the things around her he had a new object in life. He would turn the bare chamber in the mirror into a room such as no lady need disdain to call her own. This he could affect only by furnishing and adorning his. And Cosmo was poor. Yet he possessed accomplishments that could be turned to account. Although hitherto he had preferred living on his slender allowance to increasing his means by what his pride considered unworthy of his rank. He was the best swordsman in the university, and now he offered to give lessons in fencing and similar exercises to such as chose to pay him well for the trouble. His proposal was heard with surprise by the students. But it was eagerly accepted by many, and soon his instructions were not confined to the richer students, but were anxiously sought by many of the young nobility of Prague and its neighborhood. So that very soon he had a good deal of money at his command. The first thing he did was to remove his apparatus and oddities into a closet in the room. Then he placed his bed and a few other necessaries on each side of the hearth, and parted them from the rest of the room by two screens of Indian fabric. Then he put an elegant couch for the lady to lie upon in the corner where his bed had formally stood, and by degrees every day adding some article of luxury converted it at length into a rich boudoir. Every night about the same time the lady entered. The first time she saw the new couch she started with a half smile. Then her face grew very sad. The tears came to her eyes, and she laid herself upon the couch and pressed her face into the silken cushions as if to hide from everything. She took notice of each addition and each change as the work proceeded and a look of acknowledgment, since she knew that someone was ministering to her and was grateful for it, mingled with the constant look of suffering. At length, after she had lain down as usual one evening, her eyes fell upon some paintings, with which Cosmo had just finished adorning the walls. She rose, and to his great delight walked across the room and proceeded to examine them carefully, testifying much pleasure in her looks as she did so. But again the sorrowful, tearful expression returned, and again she buried her face in the pillows of her couch. Gradually, however, her countenance had grown more composed, much of the suffering manifest on her first appearance had vanished. And a kind of quiet, hopeful expression had taken its place, which, however, frequently gave way to an anxious, troubled look, mingled with something of sympathetic pity. Meanwhile, how fared Cosmo? As might be expected in one of his temperament, his interest had blossomed into love, and his love, shall I call it ripened, or withered, into passion. But alas, he loved a shadow. He could not come near her, could not speak to her, could not hear a sound from those sweet lips, to which his longing eyes would cling like bees to their honey founts. Ever in an on he sang to himself, I shall die for love of the maiden. And ever he looked again and died not, though his heart seemed ready to break with intensity of life and longing. And the more he did for her, the more he loved her, and he hoped that although she never appeared to see him, yet she was pleased to think that one unknown would give his life to her. He tried to comfort himself over his separation from her by thinking that perhaps some day she would see him and make signs to him, and that would satisfy him. For, thought he, is not this all that a loving soul can do to enter into communion with another? Nay, how many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as in a mirror, seem to know and yet never know the inward life, never enter the other's soul, and part at last with but the vaguest notion of the universe on the borders of which they have been hovering for years. If I could but speak to her, and knew that she heard me, I should be satisfied. Once he contemplated painting a picture on the wall, which should, of necessity, convey to the lady a thought of himself. But, though he had some skill with the pencil, he found his hand tremble so much when he began the attempt that he was forced to give it up. Who lives, he dies. Who dies, he is alive. One evening, as he stood gazing on his treasure, he thought he saw a faint expression of self-consciousness on her countenance, as if she surmised that passionate eyes were fixed upon her. This grew, till at last the red blood rose over her neck and cheek and brow. Cosmo's longing to approach her became almost delirious. This night she was dressed in an evening costume, resplendent with diamonds. This could add nothing to her beauty, but it presented it in a new aspect, enabled her loveliness to make a new manifestation of itself in a new embodiment. For essential beauty is infinite, and as the soul of nature needs an endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, but any one of her heart-throbs, so the individual form needs an infinite change of its environments to enable it to uncover all the faces of its loveliness. Diamonds glittered from amidst her hair, half-hidden in its luxuriance like stars through dark rain-clouds, and the bracelets on her white arms flashed all the colors of a rainbow of lightnings as she lifted her snowy hands to cover her burning face. But her beauty shone down all its adornment. If I might have but one of her feet to kiss, thought Cosmo, I should be content. Alas, he deceived himself, for passion is never content. Nor did he know that there are two ways out of her enchanted house. But suddenly, as if the pain had been driven into his heart from without, revealing itself first in pain, and afterwards in definite form, the thought darted into his mind. She has a lover somewhere. Remembered words of his bring the color on her face now. I am nowhere to her. She lives in another world all day and all night after she leaves me. Why does she come and make me love her, till I, a strong man, am too faint to look upon her more? He looked again, and her face was pale as a lily. A sorrowful compassion seemed to rebuke the glitter of the restless jewels, and the slow tears rose in her eyes. She left her room sooner this evening than was her want. Cosmo remained alone with the feelings if his bosom had been suddenly left empty and hollow, and the weight of the whole world was crushing in its walls. The next evening, for the first time since she began to come, she came not. And now Cosmo was in wretched plight. Since the thought of a rival had occurred to him, he could not rest for a moment, more than ever he longed to see the lady face to face. He persuaded himself that if he but knew the worst he would be satisfied, for then he could abandon Prague and find that relief in constant motion which is the hope of all active minds when invaded by distress. Meantime he waited with unspeakable anxiety for the next night, hoping she would return. But she did not appear. And now he felt really ill. Rallied by his fellow students on his wretched looks he ceased to attend the lectures. His engagements were neglected, he cared for nothing. The sky, with the great sun in it, was to him a heartless, burning desert. The men and women in the streets were mere puppets without motives in themselves, or interest to him. He saw them all as on the ever-changing field of a camera obscura. She, she alone and altogether was his universe, his well of life, his incarnate good. For six evenings she came not. Let his absorbing passion and the slow fever that was consuming his brain be his excuse for the resolution which he had taken and begun to execute, before that time had expired. Reasoning with himself that it must be by some enchantment connected with the mirror that the form of the lady was to be seen in it, he determined to attempt to turn to account what he had hitherto studied principally from curiosity. For, said he to himself, if a spell can force her presence in that glass, and she came unwillingly at first, may not a stronger spell such as I know, especially with the aid of her half-presence in the mirror, if ever she appears again, compel her living form to come to me here? If I do her wrong, let love be my excuse, I want only to know my doom from her own lips. He never doubted, all the time, that she was a real earthly woman, or rather, that there was a woman who somehow or other threw this reflection or her form into the magic mirror. He opened his secret drawer, took out his books of magic, lighted his lamps and read and made notes for midnight till three in the morning for three successive nights. Then he replaced his books, and the next night went out in quest of the materials necessary for the conjuration. These were not easy to find, for in love charms and all incantations of this nature, ingredients are employed scarcely fit to be mentioned, and for the thought even of which, in connection with her, he could only excuse himself on the score of his bitter need. At length he succeeded in procuring all he required, and on the seventh evening from that on which she had last appeared he found himself prepared for the exercise of unlawful and tyrannical power. He cleared the center of the room, stooped and drew a circle of red on the floor, around the spot where he stood, rode in the four quarters of mystical signs and numbers which were all powers of seven or nine, examined the whole ring carefully to see that no smallest break had occurred in the circumference, and then rose from his bending posture. As he rose the church clock struck seven and, just as she had appeared the first time, reluctant, slow and stately, glided in the lady. Cosmo trembled, and when turning she revealed a countenance worn and wand, as with sickness or inward trouble he grew faint and felt as if he dared not proceed. But as he gazed on the face and form which now possessed his whole soul, to the exclusion of all other joys and griefs, the longing to speak to her, to know that she heard him, to hear from her one word in return, became so unendurable that he suddenly and hastily resumed his preparations. Stepping carefully from the circle he put a small brazier into its center. He then set fire to its contents of charcoal and, while it burned up, opened his window and seated himself, waiting beside it. It was a sultry evening. The air was full of thunder. A sense of luxurious depression filled the brain. The sky seemed to have grown heavy and to compress the air beneath it. A kind of purplish tinge pervaded the atmosphere, and through the open window came the sense of the distant fields which all the vapors of the city could not quench. Soon the charcoal glowed. Cosmo sprinkled upon it the incense and other substances which he had compounded, and stepping within the circle turned his face from the brazier and towards the mirror. Then, fixing his eyes upon the face of the lady, he began with a trembling voice to repeat a powerful incantation. He had not gone far before the lady grew pale, and then, like a returning wave, the blood washed all its banks with its crimson tide, and she hid her face in her hands. Then he passed to a conjuration stronger still. The lady rose and walked uneasily to and fro in her room. Another spell, and she seemed seeking with her eyes for some object on which they wished to rest. At length it seemed as if she suddenly aspired him, for her eyes fixed themselves full and wide upon his, and she drew gradually, and somewhat unwillingly close to her side of the mirror, just as if his eyes had fascinated her. Cosmo had never seen her so near before. Now, at least, eyes met eyes. But he could not quite understand the expression of hers. They were full of tender and treaty, but there was something more that he could not interpret. Though his heart seemed to labor in his throat, he would allow no delight or agitation to turn him from his task. Looking still in her face, he passed on to the mightiest charm he knew. Suddenly, the lady turned and walked out of the door of her reflected chamber. A moment after she entered his room with veritable presence, and forgetting all his precautions, he sprang from the charmed circle and knelt before her. There she stood, the living lady of his passionate visions, alone beside him in a thundery twilight and the glow of a magic fire. Why, said the lady, with a trembling voice, didst thou bring a poor maiden through the rainy streets alone? Because I am dying for love of thee, but I only brought thee from the mirror there. Ah, the mirror, and she looked up at it, and shuddered. Alas, I am but a slave while that mirror exists. But do not think it was the power of thy spells that drew me. It was thy longing desire to see me that beat at the door of my heart till I was forced to yield. Canst thou love me, then? said Cosmo, in a voice calm as death, but almost inarticulate with emotion. I do not know, she replied sadly, that I cannot tell, so long as I am bewildered with enchantments. It were indeed a joy too great to lay my head on thy bosom and weep to death, for I think thou lovest me, though I do not know, but— Cosmo rose from his knees. I love thee as, nay, I know not what, for since I have loved thee, there is nothing else. He seized her hand. She withdrew it. No, better not. I am in thy power, and therefore I may not. She burst into tears, and kneeling before him in her turn said, Cosmo, if thou lovest me, set me free, even from thyself. Break the mirror. And shall I see thyself instead? That I cannot tell. I will not deceive thee. We may never meet again. A fierce struggle arose in Cosmo's bosom. Now she was in his power. She did not dislike him, at least, and he could see her when he would. To break the mirror would be to destroy his very life to banish out of his universe the only glory it possessed. The whole world would be but a prison if he annihilated the one window that looked into the paradise of love. Not yet pure in love, he hesitated. With the wail of sorrow the lady rose to her feet. Ah! He loves me not. He loves me not even as I love him. And alas! I care more for his love than even for the freedom I ask. I will not wait to be willing, cried Cosmo, and sprang to the corner where the great sword stood. Meantime it had grown very dark. Only the embers cast a red glow through the room. He seized the sword by the steel scabbard and stood before the mirror. But as he heaved a great blow at it with the heavy pommel the blade slipped half way out of the scabbard and the pommel struck the wall above the mirror. At that moment a terrible clap of thunder seemed to burst into the very room beside them. And ere Cosmo could repeat the blow he fell senseless on the hearth. When he came to himself he found that the lady and the mirror had both disappeared. He was seized with the brain fever which kept him to his couch for weeks. When he recovered his reason he began to think what could have become of the mirror. For the lady he hoped she had found her way back as she came. But as the mirror involved her fate with its own he was more immediately anxious about that. He could not think she had carried it away. It was much too heavy even if it had not been too firmly fixed in the wall for her to remove it. Then again he remembered the thunder which made him believe that it was not the lightning but some other blow that had struck him down. He concluded that either by supernatural agency he having exposed himself to the vengeance of the demons and leaving the circle of safety or in some other mode the mirror had probably found its way back to its former owner. And horrible to think of might have been by this time once more disposed of delivering up the lady into the power of another man who, if he used his power no worse than he himself had done, might yet give Cosmo abundant cause to curse the selfish indecision which prevented him from shattering the mirror at once. Indeed, to think that she whom he loved and who had prayed to him for freedom should be still at the mercy in some degree of the possessor of the mirror and was at least exposed to his constant observation was in itself enough to madden a cherry lover. He was ready to be well retarded his recovery, but at length he was able to creep abroad. He first made his way to the old brokers pretending to be in search of something else. A laughing sneer on the creature's face convinced him that he knew all about it, but he could not see it amongst his furniture or get any information out of him as to what had become of it. He expressed the utmost surprise that hearing it had been stolen, a surprise which Cosmo saw at once to be counterfeited, while at the same time he fancied that the old wretch was not at all anxious to have it mistaken for genuine. Full of distress which he concealed as well as he could, he made many searches but with no avail. Of course he could ask no questions, but he kept his ears awake for any remotest hint that might set him in a direction of search. He never went out without a short heavy hammer of steel about him that he might shatter the mirror the moment he was made happy by the sight of his lost treasure if ever that blessed moment should arrive. Whether he should see the lady again was now a thought altogether secondary and postponed to the achievement of her freedom. He wandered here and there like an anxious ghost, pale and haggard, gnawed ever at the heart by the thought of what she might be suffering all from his fault. One night he mingled with the crowd that filled the rooms of one of the most distinguished mansions in the city, for he accepted every invitation that he might lose no chance, however poor, of obtaining some information that might expedite his discovery. Here he wandered about, listening to every stray word that he could catch in the hope of a revelation. As he approached some ladies who were talking quietly in a corner, one said to another, Have you heard of the strange illness of the Princess von Hohenweis? Yes, she has been ill for more than a year now. It is very sad for so fine a creature to have such a terrible malady. She was better for some weeks lately, but within the last few days the same attacks have returned, apparently accompanied with more suffering than ever. It is altogether an inexplicable story. Is there a story connected with her illness? I have only heard imperfect reports of it, but it is said that she gave offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had held an office of trust in the family, and who, after some incoherent threats, disappeared. This peculiar affection followed soon after. But the strangest part of the story is its association with the loss of an antique mirror which stood in her dressing-room, and of which she constantly made use. Here the speaker's voice sank to a whisper, and Cosmo, although his very soul sat listening in his ears, could hear no more. He trembled too much to dare to address the ladies, even if it had been advisable to expose himself to their curiosity. The name of the Princess was well known to him, but he had never seen her, except indeed it was she which now he hardly doubted who had knelt before him on that dreadful night. Fearful of attracting attention for, from the weak state of his health, he could not recover an appearance of calmness, he made his way to the open air and reached his lodgings, glad in this, that he at least knew where she lived, although he never dreamed of approaching her openly, even if he should be happy enough to free her from her hateful bondage. He hoped, too, that as he had unexpectedly learned so much, the other and far more important part might be revealed to him ere long. Have you seen Steinwald lately? No, I have not seen him for some time. He is almost a match for me at the rapier, and I suppose he thinks he needs no more lessons. I wonder what has become of him. I want to see him very much. Let me see. Last time I saw him he was coming out of that old broker's den, to which, if you remember, you accompanied me once to look at some armour. That was fully three weeks ago. This hint was enough for Cosmo. Von Steinwald was a man of influence in the court, well known for his reckless habits and fierce passions. The very possibility that the mirror should be in his possession was hell itself to Cosmo. But violent or hasty measures of any sort were most unlikely to succeed. All that he wanted was an opportunity of breaking the fatal glass, and to obtain this he must bide his time. He revolved many plans in his mind, but without being able to fix upon any. At length, one evening, as he was passing the house of Von Steinwald, he saw the windows more than usually brilliant. He watched for a while, and seeing that company begin to arrive, hastened home, and dressed as richly as he could, in the hope of mingling with the guests unquestioned, in effecting which, there could be no difficulty for a man of his carriage. In a lofty, silent chamber in another part of this city lay a form more like marble than a living woman. The loveliness of death seemed frozen upon her face, for her lips were rigid and her eyelids closed. Her long white hands were crossed over her breast, and no breathing disturbed their repose. Beside the dead men speak and whisper as if the deepest rest of all could be broken by the sound of living voice. Just so, though the soul was evidently beyond the reach of all intimations from the senses, the two ladies who sat beside her spoke in the gentlest tones of subdued sorrow. She is lain so for an hour. This cannot last long, I fear. How much thinner she has grown within the last few weeks. If she would only speak and explain what she suffers, it would be better for her. I think she has visions in her trances, but nothing can induce her to refer to them when she is awake. Does she ever speak in these trances? I have never heard her, but they say she walks sometimes, and once put the whole household in a terrible fright by disappearing for a whole hour and returning drenched with rain and almost dead with exhaustion and fright. But even then she would give no account of what had happened. A scarce audible murmur rose from the yet motionless lips of the lady here startled by her attendance. After several ineffectual attempts at articulation the word Cosmo burst from her. Then she lay still as before, but only for a moment. With a wild cry she sprang from the couch erect on the floor, flung her arms above her head, with clasped and straining hands, and her wide eyes flashing with light, called aloud with the voice exultant as that of a spirit bursting from a sepulcher. I am free! I am free! I thank thee!" Then she flung herself on the couch and sobbed. Then rose and paced wildly up and down the room with gestures of mingled delight and anxiety. Then turning to her motionless attendance, quick, Lisa, my cloak and hood. Then lower. I must go to him. Make haste, Lisa. You may come with me, if you will. In another moment they were in the street hurrying along towards one of the bridges over the Moldau. The moon was near the zenith and the streets were almost empty. The princess soon outstripped her attendant and was half way over the bridge before the other reached it. Are you free, lady? The mirror is broken. Are you free? The words were spoken close beside her as she hurried on. She turned, and there, leaning on the parapet in a recess of the bridge, stood Cosmo in a splendid dress but with a white and quivering face. Cosmo, I am free and thy servant forever. I was coming to you now. An IDU for death made me bold, but I could get no further. Have I atoned at all? Do I love you a little? I know that you love me, my Cosmo, but what do you say about death? He did not reply. His hand was pressed against his side. She looked more closely. The blood was welling from between the fingers. She flung her arms around him with a faint, bitter wail. When Lisa came up she found her mistress kneeling above a wan dead face which smiled on in the spectral moonbeams. And now I will say no more about these wondrous volumes, though I could tell many a tale out of them and could perhaps vaguely represent some entrancing thoughts of a deeper kind which I found within them. From many a sultry noon till twilight did I sit in that grand hall, buried and risen again in these old books. And I trust I have carried away in my soul some of the exhalations of their undying leaves. In after hours of deserved or needful sorrow portions of what I read there have often come to me again with an unexpected comforting, which was not fruitless, even though the comfort might seem in itself groundless and vain. Your gallery, how we passed through, not without much content, in many singularities. But we saw not that which my daughter came to look upon, the state of her mother. WINTER'S TALE It seemed to me strange that all this time I had heard no music in the fairy palace. I was convinced there must be music in it. But that my sense was as yet too gross to receive the influence of those mysterious motions that beget sound. Sometimes I felt sure, from the way the few figures of which I got such transitory glimpses past me, or glided into vacancy before me, that they were moving to the law of music. And in fact several times I fancied for a moment that I heard a few wondrous tones coming I knew not whence. But they did not last long enough to convince me that I had heard them with the bodily sense. Such as they were, however, they took strange liberties with me, causing me to burst suddenly into tears, of which there was no presence to make me ashamed, or casting me into a kind of trance of speechless delight which, passing as suddenly, left me faint and longing for more. Now on an evening, before I had been a week in the palace, I was wandering through one lighted arcade and corridor after another. At length I arrived through a door that closed behind me, in another vast hall of the palace. It was filled with a subdued crimson light by which I saw that slender pillars of black built close to the walls of white marble rose to a great height, and then, dividing into innumerable divergent arches, supported a roof like the walls of white marble upon which the arches intersected intricately, forming a fretting of black upon white like the network of a skeleton leaf. The floor was black. Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side the place of the wall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick silk, hanging in heavy and rich folds. Behind each of these curtains burned a powerful light, and these were the sources of the glow that filled the hall. A peculiar, delicious odor pervaded the place. As soon as I entered the old inspiration seemed to return to me, for I felt a strong impulse to sing. Or rather, it seemed as if someone else was singing a song in my soul which wanted to come forth at my lips, embodied in my breath. But I kept silence, and feeling somewhat overcome by the red light and the perfume as well as by the emotion within me, and seeing it one into the hall a great crimson chair, more like a throne than a chair, beside a table of white marble, I went to it, and throwing myself in it gave myself up to a succession of images of bewildering beauty which passed before my inward eye in a long and occasionally crowded train. Here I sat for hours, I suppose, till, returning somewhat to myself, I saw that the red light had paled away, and felt a cool gentle breath gliding over my forehead. I rose and left the hall with unsteady steps, finding my way with some difficulty to my own chamber, and faintly remembering, as I went, that only in the marble cave before I found the sleeping statue had I ever had a similar experience. After this I repaired every morning to the same hall, where I sometimes sat in the chair and dreamed deliciously, and sometimes walked up and down over the black floor. Sometimes I acted within myself a whole drama, during one of these perambulations, sometimes walked deliberately through the whole epic of a tale, sometimes ventured to sing a song, though with a shrinking fear of I knew not what. I was astonished at the beauty of my own voice as it rang through the place, or rather crept undulating like a serpent of sound, along the walls and roof of the superb music-hall. Entrancing verses arose within me as of their own accord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring no addition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But ever in the pauses of these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed to hear something like the distant sound of multitudes of dancers, and felt as if it was the unheard music, moving their rhythmic motion that within me blossomed in verse and song. I felt, too, that could I but see the dance, I should, from the harmony of complicated movements, not of the dancers in relation to each other merely, but of each dancer individually in the manifested plastic power that moved the consenting harmonious form, understand the whole of the music on the billows of which they floated and swung. At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came upon me, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains, and, looking if perchance behind it there might not be hid some other mystery, which might at least remove a step further the bewilderment of the present one. Nor was I altogether disappointed. I walked to one of the magnificent draperies, lifted a corner, and peeped in. There, burned a great crimson globe-shaped light high in the cubicle centre of another hall, which might be larger or less than that in which I stood, for its dimensions were not easily perceived, seeing that the floor and roof and walls were entirely of black marble. The roof was supported by the same arrangement of pillars radiating in arches as that of the first hall. Only here the pillars and arches were of dark red. But what absorbed my delighted gaze was an innumerable assembly of white marble statues of every form and in multitudinous posture filling the hall throughout. These stood in the ruddy glow of the great lamp upon pedestals of jet black. Around the lamp, shown in golden letters, plainly legible from where I stood, the two words, touch not. There wasn't all this, however, no solution to the sound of dancing, and now I was aware that the influence on my mind had ceased. I did not go in that evening, for I was weary and faint, but I hoarded up the expectation of entering as of a great coming joy. Next night I walked, as on the proceeding, through the hall. My mind was filled with pictures and songs, and therewith so much absorbed that I did not for some time think of looking within the curtain I had last night lifted. When the thought of doing so occurred to me first, I happened to be within a few yards of it. I became conscious at the same moment that the sound of dancing had been for some time in my ears. I approached the curtain quickly, and lifting it entered the black hall. Everything was still as death. I should have concluded that the sound must have proceeded from some other more distant quarter, which conclusion its faintness would, in ordinary circumstances, have necessitated from the first. But there was a something about the statues that caused me still to remain in doubt. As I said, each did perfectly still upon its black pedestal. But there was about every one a certain air, not of motion, but as if it had just ceased from movement, as if the rest were not altogether of the marbly stillness of thousands of years. It was as if the peculiar atmosphere of each had yet a kind of invisible tremulousness, as if its agitated wavelets had not yet subsided into a perfect calm. I had the suspicion that they had anticipated my appearance, and had sprung each from the living joy of the dance to the death, silence, and blackness of its isolated pedestal just before I entered. I walked across the central hall to the curtain opposite the one I had lifted, and entering there found all the appearances similar, only that the statues were different and differently grouped. Neither did they produce on my mind that impression of motion just expired which I had experienced from the others. I found that behind every one of the crimson curtains was a similar hall, similarly lighted and similarly occupied. The next night I did not allow my thoughts to be absorbed as before with inward images, but crept stealthily along to the furthest curtain in the hall, from behind which likewise I had formerly seemed to hear the sound of passing. I drew aside its edge as suddenly as I could and looking in saw that the utmost stillness pervaded the vast place. I walked in and passed through it to the other end. There I found that it communicated with the circular corridor divided from it only by two rows of red columns. This corridor, which was black with red niches holding statues, ran entirely about the statue halls, forming a communication between the further ends of the mall. Another that is, as regards the central hall of white once they all diverged like radii, finding their circumference in the corridor. Round this corridor I now went, entering all the halls of which there were twelve, and finding them all similarly constructed but filled with quite various statues of what seemed both ancient and modern sculpture. After I had simply walked through them I found myself sufficiently tired to long for rest, and went to my own room. In the night I dreamed that walking close by one of the curtains I was suddenly seized with the desire to enter and darted in. This time I was too quick for them. All the statues were in motion, statues no longer, but men and women, all shapes of beauty that ever sprang from the brain of the sculptor, mingled in the convolutions of a complicated dance. Passing through them to the further end I almost started from my sleep on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, nor seemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldness and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner, my Lady of the Cave, the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb of her cradle at the call of my songs. While I gazed in speechless astonishment and admiration a dark shadow descending from above like the curtain of a stage gradually hid her entirely from my view, I felt with a shudder that this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for days. I awoke with a stifled cry. Of course the next evening I began my journey through the halls, for I knew not to which my dream had carried me in the hope of proving the dream to be a true one, by discovering my marble beauty upon her black pedestal. At length on reaching the tenth hall I thought I recognized some of the forms I had seen dancing in my dream, and to my bewilderment, when I arrived at the extreme corner on the left there stood the only one I had yet seen, a vacant pedestal. It was exactly in the position occupied in my dream by the pedestal on which the white lady stood. Hope beat violently in my heart. Now, I said to myself, if yet another part of the dream would but come true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in their nightly dance, it might be the rest would follow, and I should see on the pedestal my marble queen, then surely if my song suffice to give her life before when she lay in the bonds of alabaster, much more would they be sufficient then to give her volition and motion when she alone of assembled crowds of marble forms would be standing rigid and cold. But the difficulty was to surprise the dancers. I had found that a premeditated attempt at surprise, though executed with the utmost care and rapidity, was of no avail. And, in my dream, it was affected by a sudden thought suddenly executed. I saw, therefore, that there was no plan of operation offering any probability of success but this, to allow my mind to be occupied with other thoughts as I wandered around the great center hall, and so wait till the impulse to enter one of the others should happen to arise in me just at the moment when I was close to one of the crimson curtains. For I hoped that if I entered any one of the twelve halls at the right moment, that would, as it were, give me the right of entrance to all the others, seeing they all had communication behind. I would not diminish the hope of the right chance by supposing it necessary that a desire to enter should awake within me, precisely when I was close to the curtains of the tenth hall. At first the impulses to see recurred so continually in spite of the crowded imagery that kept passing through my mind that they formed too nearly a continuous chain, for the hope that any one of them would succeed as a surprise. But as I persisted in banishing them they recurred less and less often, and after two or three at considerable intervals had come when the spot where I happened to be was unsuitable the hope strengthened that soon one might arise just at the right moment, namely when in walking round the hall I should be close to one of the curtains. At length the right moment and the impulse coincided. I darted into the ninth hall. It was full of the most exquisite moving forms, the whole space wavered and swam with the involutions of an intricate dance. It seemed to break suddenly as I entered, and all made one or two bounds toward their pedestals. But apparently, unfinding that they were thoroughly overtaken, they returned to their employment, for it seemed with them earnest enough to be called such, without further heeding me. Somewhat impeded by the floating crowd I made what haste I could towards the bottom of the hall, whence entering the corridor I turned towards the tenth. I soon arrived at the corner I wanted to reach, for the corridor was comparatively empty. But although the dancers here, after a little confusion altogether disregarded my presence, I was dismayed at beholding, even yet, a vacant pedestal. But I had a conviction that she was near me, and as I looked at the pedestal I thought I saw upon it vaguely revealed as if through overlapping folds of drapery the indistinct outlines of white feet. Yet there was no sign of drapery or concealing shadow whatever. But I remembered the descending shadow in my dream, and I hoped still in the power of my songs, thinking that what could dispel alabaster might likewise be capable of dispelling what concealed my beauty now, even if it were the demon whose darkness had overshadowed all my life.