A German Visionary.--Remarkable conversation with him.--History of
a Ghost-seer.
It is not at every corner of life that we stumble upon an intrinsically
singular character: to-day however, at Noronha’s, I fell in with a Saxon
count,[27] who justly answers to that description. This man is not only
thoroughly imbued with the theoretical mysticism of the German school,
but has most firmly persuaded himself, and hundreds besides, that he
holds converse with the souls of the departed. Though most impressive
and even extravagant upon this subject, when started, he proves himself
a man of singular judgment upon most others, is a good geometrician, an
able chymist, a mineralogist of no ordinary proficiency, and has made
discoveries in the art of smelting metals, which have been turned
already to useful purpose. Yet nothing can beat out of this cool
reflective head, that magical operations may be performed to evident
effect, and the devil most positively evocated.
I thought, at first sight, there was a something uncouth and ghostly in
his appearance, that promised strange communications; he has a careworn
look, a countenance often convulsed with apparently painful twitches,
and a lofty skull, set off with bristling hair, powdered as white as
Caucasus.
Notwithstanding I by no means courted his acquaintance, he was resolved
to make up to me, and dissipate by the smoothest address he could
assume, any prejudices his uncommon cast of features might have
inspired. Drawing his chair close to mine, whilst Noronha and his party
were busily engaged at voltarete, he tried to allure my attention by
throwing out hints of the wonders within reach of a person born under
the smile of certain constellations: that I was the person he meant to
insinuate, I have little doubt. Having heard that fortune had conferred
upon me some few of her golden gifts, he thought, perhaps, that I might
be _fused_ to advantage, like any other lump of the precious metals. Be
his motives what they may, he certainly took as many pains to wind
himself into my good opinion as if I had actually been the prime
favourite of a planet, or a distant cousin by some diabolical
intermarriage, in the style of one of the Plantagenet matches, of old
Beelzebub himself.
After a good deal of conversation upon different subjects, chiefly of a
sombrous nature, happening to ask him if he had known Schröffer, the
most renowned ghost-seer in all Germany,--“Intimately well,” was his
reply; “a bold young man, not so free, alas! from sensual taint as the
awful career he had engaged in demanded,--he rushed upon danger
unprepared, at an unhallowed moment--his fate was terrible. I passed a
week with him not six months before he disappeared in the frightful
manner you have heard of; it was a week of mental toil and suffering, of
fasts and privations of various natures, and of sights sufficiently
appalling to drive back the whole current of the blood from the heart.
It was at this period that, returning one dark and stormy night from
trying experiments upon living animals, more excruciating than any the
keenest anatomist ever perpetrated, I found lying upon my chair, coiled
up in a circle like the symbol of eternity, an enormous snake of a
deadly lead colour; it neither hissed nor moved for several minutes:
during this pause, whilst I remained aghast looking full upon it, a
voice more like the whisper of trees than any sound of human utterance,
articulated certain words, which I have retained, and used to powerful
effect in moments of peril and extreme urgency.”
I shall not easily forget the strange inquisitive look he gave me whilst
making this still stranger communication; he saw my curiosity was
excited, and flattered himself he had made upon me the impression he
meditated; but when I asked, with the tone of careless levity, what
became of the snake on the cushion, after the voice had ceased, he shook
his white locks somewhat angrily, and croaked forth with a formidable
German accent, “Ask no more--ask no more--you are not in a disposition
at present sufficiently pure and serious to comprehend what I _might_
disclose. Ask no more.”--For this time at least I most implicitly obeyed
him.
Promising to call upon me and continue our conversation any day or hour
I might choose to appoint, he glided off so imperceptibly, that had I
been a little more persuaded of the possibility of supernatural
occurrences, I might have believed he had actually vanished. “A good
riddance,” said Noronha; “I don’t half like that man, nor can I make out
why Florida Blanca is so gracious to him.”--“I rather suspect he is a
spy upon us all,” observed the Sardinian ambassadress, who made one of
the voltarete party; “and though he guessed right about the winning card
last night at the Countess of Benevente’s, I am determined not to invite
him to dinner again in a hurry.”