“under the stimulating influence of the journey, and the countries hurriedly seen, combined with the great silence and the indescribable charm of the sea. ‘Ce ne fut que cela et rien de plus.’ ‘Only this, and nothing more!’”
With these words, Miss Miller shows us out, politely and energetically. Her parting words in her negation, confirmed over again in English, leave behind a curiosity; viz., what position is to be negated by these words? “Ce ne fut que cela et rien de plus”—that is to say, really, only “le charme impalpable de la mer”—and the young man who sang melodiously during the night watch is long since forgotten, and no one is to know, least of all the dreamer, that he was a morning star, who came before the creation of a new day.[[79]] One should take care lest he satisfy himself and the reader with a sentence such as “ce ne fut que cela.” Otherwise, it might immediately happen that one would become disturbed again. This occurs to Miss Miller too, since she allowed an English quotation to follow,—“Only this, and nothing more,” without giving the source, it is true. The quotation comes from an unusually effective poem, “The Raven” by Poe. The line referred to occurs in the following:
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
‘’Tis some visitor.’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door’—
Only this, and nothing more.”
The spectral raven knocks nightly at his door and reminds the poet of his irrevocably lost “Lenore.” The raven’s name is “Nevermore,” and as a refrain to every verse he croaks his horrible “Nevermore.” Old memories come back tormentingly, and the spectre repeats inexorably “Nevermore.” The poet seeks in vain to frighten away the dismal guest; he calls to the raven:
“‘Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend,’ I shrieked, upstarting—
‘Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!