THE ORACLE TELLS ME WONDERS
I forgot for a moment how impervious my mask and domino were to the hard
stare of the old campaigner, and was preparing for an animated scuffle.
It was only for a moment, of course; but the count cautiously drew a
little back as the gasconading corporal, in blue uniform, white vest,
and white gaiters--for my friend Gaillarde was as loud and swaggering in
his assumed character as in his real one of a colonel of dragoons--drew
near. He had already twice all but got himself turned out of doors for
vaunting the exploits of Napoleon le Grand, in terrific mock-heroics,
and had very nearly come to hand-grips with a Prussian hussar. In fact,
he would have been involved in several sanguinary rows already, had not
his discretion reminded him that the object of his coming there at all,
namely, to arrange a meeting with an affluent widow, on whom he believed
he had made a tender impression, would not have been promoted by his
premature removal from the festive scene of which he was an ornament, in
charge of a couple of _gendarmes_.
"Money! Gold! Bah! What money can a wounded soldier like your humble
servant have amassed, with but his sword-hand left, which, being
necessarily occupied, places not a finger at his command with which to
scrape together the spoils of a routed enemy?"
"No gold from him," said the magician. "His scars frank him."
"Bravo, Monsieur le prophète! Bravissimo! Here I am. Shall I begin,
_mon sorcier_, without further loss of time, to question you?"
Without waiting for an answer, he commenced, in stentorian tones. After
half-a-dozen questions and answers, he asked: "Whom do I pursue at
present?"
"Two persons."
"Ha! Two? Well, who are they?"
"An Englishman, whom if you catch, he will kill you; and a French widow,
whom if you find, she will spit in your face."
"Monsieur le magicien calls a spade a spade, and knows that his cloth
protects him. No matter! Why do I pursue them?"
"The widow has inflicted a wound on your heart, and the Englishman a
wound on your head. They are each separately too strong for you; take
care your pursuit does not unite them."
"Bah! How could that be?"
"The Englishman protects ladies. He has got that fact into your head.
The widow, if she sees, will marry him. It takes some time, she will
reflect, to become a colonel, and the Englishman is unquestionably
young."
"I will cut his cock's-comb for him," he ejaculated with an oath and a
grin; and in a softer tone he asked, "Where is she?"
"Near enough to be offended if you fail."
"So she ought, by my faith. You are right, Monsieur le prophète! A
hundred thousand thanks! Farewell!" And staring about him, and
stretching his lank neck as high as he could, he strode away with his
scars, and white waistcoat and gaiters, and his bearskin shako.
I had been trying to see the person who sat in the palanquin. I had only
once an opportunity of a tolerably steady peep. What I saw was singular.
The oracle was dressed, as I have said, very richly, in the Chinese
fashion. He was a figure altogether on a larger scale than the
interpreter, who stood outside. The features seemed to me large and
heavy, and the head was carried with a downward inclination! The eyes
were closed, and the chin rested on the breast of his embroidered
pelisse. The face seemed fixed, and the very image of apathy. Its
character and _pose_ seemed an exaggerated repetition of the
immobility of the figure who communicated with the noisy outer world.
This face looked blood-red; but that was caused, I concluded, by the
light entering through the red silk curtains. All this struck me almost
at a glance; I had not many seconds in which to make my observation. The
ground was now clear, and the Marquis said, "Go forward, my friend."
I did so. When I reached the magician, as we called the man with the
black wand, I glanced over my shoulder to see whether the Count was
near.
No, he was some yards behind; and he and the Marquis, whose curiosity
seemed to be by this time satisfied, were now conversing generally upon
some subject of course quite different.
I was relieved, for the sage seemed to blurt out secrets in an
unexpected way; and some of mine might not have amused the Count.
I thought for a moment. I wished to test the prophet. A
Church-of-England man was a _rara avis_ in Paris.
"What is my religion?" I asked.
"A beautiful heresy," answered the oracle instantly.
"A heresy?--and pray how is it named?"
"Love."
"Oh! Then I suppose I am a polytheist, and love a great many?"
"One."
"But, seriously," I asked, intending to turn the course of our colloquy
a little out of an embarrassing channel, "have I ever learned any words
of devotion by heart?"
"Yes."
"Can you repeat them?"
"Approach."
I did, and lowered my ear.
The man with the black wand closed the curtains, and whispered, slowly
and distinctly, these words which, I need scarcely tell you, I instantly
recognized:
_"I may never see you more; and, oh! I that I could forget
you!--go--farewell--for God's sake, go!"_
I started as I heard them. They were, you know, the last words whispered
to me by the Countess.
"Good Heavens! How miraculous! Words heard most assuredly, by no ear on
earth but my own and the lady's who uttered them, till now!"
I looked at the impassive face of the spokesman with the wand. There was
no trace of meaning, or even of a consciousness that the words he had
uttered could possibly interest me.
"What do I most long for?" I asked, scarcely knowing what I said.
"Paradise."
"And what prevents my reaching it?"
"A black veil."
Stronger and stronger! The answers seemed to me to indicate the minutest
acquaintance with every detail of my little romance, of which not even
the Marquis knew anything! And I, the questioner, masked and robed so
that my own brother could not have known me!
"You said I loved someone. Am I loved in return?" I asked.
"Try."
I was speaking lower than before, and stood near the dark man with the
beard, to prevent the necessity of his speaking in a loud key.
"Does anyone love me?" I repeated.
"Secretly," was the answer.
"Much or little?" I inquired.
"Too well."
"How long will that love last?"
"Till the rose casts its leaves."
The rose--another allusion!
"Then--darkness!" I sighed. "But till then I live in light."
"The light of violet eyes."
Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had just pronounced it, is, at
least, a superstition. How it exalts the imagination! How it enervates
the reason! How credulous it makes us!
All this which, in the case of another I should have laughed at, most
powerfully affected me in my own. It inflamed my ardor, and half crazed
my brain, and even influenced my conduct.
The spokesman of this wonderful trick--if trick it were--now waved me
backward with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes still fixed upon the
group, and this time encircled with an aura of mystery in my fancy;
backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw him raise his hand
suddenly, with a gesture of command, as a signal to the usher who
carried the golden wand in front.
The usher struck his wand on the ground, and, in a shrill voice,
proclaimed: "The great Confu is silent for an hour."
Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort of blind of bamboo, which
descended with a sharp clatter, and secured it at the bottom; and then
the man in the tall fez, with the black beard and wand, began a sort of
dervish dance. In this the men with the gold wands joined, and finally,
in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the center of the
circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little,
quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion
became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid
that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a mill-wheel, and
amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange
performers mingled with the crowd, and the exhibition, for the time at
least, ended.
The Marquis d'Harmonville was standing not far away, looking on the
ground, as one could judge by his attitude and musing. I approached, and
he said:
"The Count has just gone away to look for his wife. It is a pity she was
not here to consult the prophet; it would have been amusing, I daresay,
to see how the Count bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have asked him to
introduce you."
With a beating heart, I accompanied the Marquis d'Harmonville.