XXX
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....