Once more does the terrible woman rush at me, once more am I held in
that mad embrace, once more--on the wings of the wind--do we dash round
the room! And once more are all my senses lost in the fiendish whirl!
I attempt to struggle, would pit the abounding strength of my youth
against the woman and subdue her. In vain! I can think, I can act, no
longer. My whole being is in a swoon, and I am conscious of nothing but
two icy lips pressed upon mine with a vehemence calculated to draw my
very life out of me.
A shudder seizes me, and the fear of death, and then--again that blow on
my shoulders--
I feel as if a pair of iron clamps had been taken off me and I had been
freed, and I sink down upon a sofa.
A laughing, jeering crowd surrounds me, shouting:
“The sailor is crazy! He has gone out of his mind!”
Have I again been dancing alone in public?
I jump up in a rage, and exclaim, as I toss back my dishevelled hair
from my burning brow:
“Abominable trickery! Let me pass! Let me get my hands on her, and
unmask her!”
Something rings on the floor. It has fallen from my hand, hitherto
clenched and just now opened. Triumphantly I snatch it up, exulting:
“Her cross! Ha! that shall be my clue!”
On this occasion, too, no trace of the mysterious nun was to be found.
It was at first superciliously assumed, as before, that I must be drunk
or insane, but my serious mood and energetic investigations soon altered
that notion. I might myself have doubted my mental soundness had it not
been for the cross in my hand, which I at once recognized as being that
worn by the nun, and had not a lackey finally confessed to having beheld
the strange figure. He was coming from the colonnade with a tray of
refreshments when he saw me in conversation with her. The mask had
something familiar about her, he said, but he could not remember where
he had seen her before. He had been a servant in the palace for forty
years.
Nobody thought of a spectre; on the other hand extravagant speculations
became rife of a conspirator being at work. It was rumored the king had
originally intended to wear a sailor costume.
Of course, it was him the uncanny visitor had designs upon. In view of
the fact that the political horizon was very dark and clouded at that
time, the conjecture was perhaps not altogether phantastical, and for
this reason the report quickly reached the ears of the king and the
royal family. I was promptly summoned before His Majesty, and it gave
me a sort of revengeful pleasure to relate the incident to that august
person. For I was still fully persuaded that some young member of his
family had played this obnoxious trick upon me.
The king nodded thoughtfully upon my frank declaration that, according
to my researches, the enigmatical female could only have come from the
royal apartments.
Said his Majesty:
“May I ask you, my dear Baron, to show me the cross you found?”