Cernis, custodia qualis
Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
“Aeneid,” lib. vi. 574.
(See you what porter sits within the vestibule?--what face
watches at the threshold?)
And it is profound night. All is at rest within the old castle,--all is
breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with his
austere wisdom,--Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye will read
thy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the sunny face
of Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose,--Mejnour
comes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour!
So, brave youth,--brave despite all thy errors,--so, with a steady
pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there
opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning
till he came to the following passage:--
“When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open the
casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. He
must beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit.
To taste till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame gradually
to the ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death.”
He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again
changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The
moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it,
and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the
presence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps
(nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by
one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted
the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently
this light grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist,
gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart
of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldness
of death. Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with
difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that
contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved
his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour
and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning,
instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had
invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom
erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.
The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency
of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly
saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form,
gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They
appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or
expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order,
he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught
and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the
chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded
him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of
this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him
stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate
whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same
as if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft,
till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through
the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed
them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at
the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable
horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object
shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with
a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes
that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was
distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror,
that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a
thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the
chamber.
The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan,
and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was
veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved
not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather
to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it
cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed
its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the
most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed
to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity
which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else
so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so
intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost
HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--something that served to
show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of
matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to
material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,--his
hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that
appalling gaze,--the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear
comprehended the words it said.
“Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the
Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am
I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the
delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the
countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover.” And the Horror crawled near
and nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his
cheek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no
more till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found
himself in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice,
and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and
whistling a Calabrian love-air.