He had disappeared.
But a moment later I was conscious of his presence close behind me. I
knew that he was standing there, his eyes fixed upon me; for between my
neck and shoulders I could feel a weight, an impact, like the one I had
experienced when the Vicomte Antoine found me lying on the heath, and
the one with which the Count François welcomed me on my entrance into
the House of the Secret....
Like these, I say ... but no! The present pressure was something
incomparably heavier and more forceful--a veritable succession of
hammer blows descending upon me with a violence that left me bruised
and dazed.
Then suddenly ... everything began to go round and round--an
overpowering dizziness assailed me. The lens of the golden sparkles,
the armchair opposite me, the clock in the corner, the antique chest
against the wall, all seemed to be caught up in a cyclonic whirl of
which I was the tottering, collapsing center. In spite of the downy
prop behind my head and the cushions that contained me all around, I
seemed to be falling, falling, or soaring, soaring; and my frenzied
fingers clutched the arms of my chair, which, to my sense, now plunged
into bottomless depths, now darted upwards to impossible heights,
rocking frightfully meanwhile and even turning completely over and
around. A measureless void was all about me, and my single intelligent
thought was one of surprise that I was not hurtling into this gulf of
nothingness.
An atrocious torture, but a short one! A deadening stupor came over me
progressively, first relieving and finally overcoming my dizziness. My
sensation now was one of extreme fatigue, more exhausting than any I
had ever before experienced. My head especially seemed emptied of all
its cerebral substance as a result of the first shocks I had received;
and it lay helpless, lifeless, in its hollow formed in the upholstery.
A whimsical interest in what time it might possibly be came to obsess
me. I remember that I could hardly move my eyes when I tried to turn
them toward the clock; and if I did succeed eventually in focussing
them on that point, I could not read the clock’s hands, so dark and
murky had my eyeballs become, so insensitive my retina.
A curious tingling began at the ends of my fingers and toes, and spread
upwards into my hands and arms, and into my feet and legs. It was like
the beginning of a cramp.
But the cramp did not come. What I felt rather was a kind of chill. But
neither was this a clearly defined sensation, so rapid, so confused,
were the changes and variations in my impressions. It was, on the
whole, as though my body were disintegrating little by little, being
torn apart, filling meanwhile with a strange liquid, lighter than
blood, in which all my organs, freed from their muscles and tendons,
seemed to be afloat and drifting.
The conviction came over me that I was about to die....
* * * * * * * * *
It were better not to resume my story!
My pencil has been lying idle for a long time. Here on this marble slab
is the black-bordered register. I hesitate.... I cast my eyes around....
The noon-day sun is gilding the tips of the cypress trees, while
through their stiffened branches the winter wind is playing fitfully.
Not a cloud is visible in that cold blue sky. Despite the torpor that
besets the arid marrow of my bones, I feel almost a thrill of joy at
the splendor of this last day of mine....
Yes, it were better to stop my story here!
Why write on? No one will believe me! Indeed I myself almost doubt the
reality of this fabulous, this impossible, this incredible experience!
If I were not here in this place, if I could not read the fateful,
irrevocable epitaph graven on this stone on which my elbows rest--if
I could not run my palsied fingers through this long snow-white
beard--no, I would not believe, I would not believe! I would say rather
that I were dreaming, that I were raving in some ghastly mad obsession.
But the proof, the proof is there! I cannot hold my peace! I must
finish the narrative I have begun. All men, all women--my brothers and
sisters--are in danger! I must save them!
O you who read this my confession, this my last will and
testament,--for the love of your God, if you have one, do not doubt me!
But read, understand, believe!
* * * * * * * * *
Yes, I thought I was about to die.
The strange tingling, now the only sensation which I could isolate
with any distinctness, was running through my whole body, from the
tips of my toes to the tips of my hair. It was no longer like the
first symptoms of a cramp, as it had been at the beginning. No, it was
something more regular in beat, more enthralling in power. It caused
my mind to revert to Madeleine and the morning rides we used to take
together; to our picnics in the forest clearings, to a fondness she
had for burying her naked arms in the ground so that I could compare
the feeling of the smooth warm sand with that of her smooth warm skin.
Through my half-opened fingers I would strain the minute grains and
as they fell they made a faint continuous sound that I remember for
its peculiarity. Such a sound I was hearing now; but it came not from
between my fingers, but from under my skin, from inside my flesh--the
murmur of an invisible sand which my veins and nerves were sweeping
along their channels in a full, regular, unbroken flow, from my heart
and my other internal organs toward my hands and toward my feet. This
strange flood became a rushing torrent about my wrists and ankles,
and around the joints of my fingers--narrow passages which confined,
condensed, cramped the current. But it went beyond my own extremities,
far beyond! How far I could not say. I know simply that my fingers
and toes were at once moist and chilled, like vessels of unglazed
pottery which give off water drop by drop and become ice-cold from
evaporation....
And all the time, on the back of my head and between my shoulders, I
could feel blow after blow in furious succession, blows which I know
came from the all-powerful eyes of the old marquis, who stood there
relentlessly raining them upon me.
I grew weaker still. A few moments before I had tried vainly to look at
the clock against the wall. Now even my eyelids were paralyzed. I could
not close my eyes nor could I turn them. They were glued inexorably
upon the objects directly in front of them--the translucent lens (the
golden glints in its substance glowing now mysteriously); the armchair
where, for a second, I had glimpsed the seated image of myself;
beyond, a bit of white-washed wall--all blending in a blurred whirling
confusion.
As second followed on second I thought I could feel more and more of my
life flowing silently out of my wasting body....
Then suddenly, something extraordinary occurred; and I was so shocked
by it that I managed, calling on I know not what reserves of energy,
to open my eyes a little wider and to clear their vision by winking my
eyelids several times.
In the chair where I had before seen my own image seated, now I
could see, clearly, distinctly, beyond any possible doubt whatever,
beyond any chance of its being an hallucination--I could see with an
unspeakable overwhelming certitude--another image, likewise seated,
another image also made of light, but of a different kind of light--a
sort of fluctuating phosphorescent shadow which was gradually taking
form ... out of nothing....