“I have been thinking,” said Volktman, as he placed his hand on his daughter’s head, “that I shall soon leave thee; and I should like to see thee protected by another before my own departure.”
“Ah, father,” said Lucilla, as the tears rushed to her eyes, “do not talk thus! indeed, indeed, you must not indulge in this perpetual gloom and seclusion of life. You promised to take me with you, some day this week, to the Vatican. Do let it be to-morrow; the weather has been so fine lately; and who knows how long it may last?”
“True,” said Volktman; “and to-morrow will not, I think, be unfavourable to our stirring abroad, for the moon will be of the same age as at my birth—an accident that thou wilt note, my child, to be especially auspicious towards any enterprise.”
The poor astrologer so rarely stirred from his home, that he did well to consider a walk of a mile or two in the light of an enterprise.—“I have wished,” continued he, after a pause, “that I might see our English friend once more—that is, ere long. For, to tell thee the truth, Lucilla, certain events happening unto him do, strangely enough, occur about the same time as that in which events, equally boding, will befall thee. This coincidence it was which contributed to make me assume so warm an interest in the lot of a stranger. I would I might see him soon.”
Lucilla’s beautiful breast heaved, and her face was covered with blushes: these were symptoms of a disorder that never occurred to the recluse.
“Thou rememberest the foreigner?” asked Volktman, after a pause.
“Yes,” said Lucilla, half inaudibly.
“I have not heard from him of late: I will make question concerning him ere the cock crow.”
“Nay my father!” said Lucilla, quickly: “not tonight: you want rest, your eyes are heavy.”
“Girl,” said the mystic, “the soul sleepeth not, nor wanteth sleep: even as the stars, to which (as the Arabian saith) there is also a soul, wherewith an intent passion of our own doth make a union—so that we, by an unslumbering diligence, do constitute ourselves a part of the heaven itself!—even, I say, as the stars may vanish from the human eye, nor be seen in the common day—though all the while their course is stopped not, nor their voices dumb—even so doth the soul of man retire, as it were, into a seeming sleep and torpor, yet it worketh all the same—and perhaps with a less impeded power, in that it is more free from common obstruction and trivial hindrance. And if I purpose to confer this night with the ‘Intelligence’ that ruleth earth and earth’s beings, concerning this stranger, it will not be by the vigil and the scheme, but by the very sleep which thou imaginest, in thy mental darkness, would deprive me of the resources of my art.”