“You, Enchanter, living, according to your own words, an innumerable number of years,” said he, very politely, although in a slightly mocking tone; “you are in connection not only with the living, but with those beyond the tomb. That is, doubtless, one of your jokes, and I, of course, do not believe one word of it,” he added, trying to be very amiable; “it would be silly to believe such tales. But there are tales and tales, you understand me?… I should very much like to question you concerning a certain incident.…”
“I am at your orders,” said the stranger.
“For instance,—and this is quite a conversation àpropos,” continued the Count du Nord; “I have always been very much interested in the supernatural, especially in the inexplicable interference of supernatural agents in our intellectual life. I should very much like … I would ask you, as we have met so unexpectedly, to explain to me one very mysterious event, a very strange meeting.…”
“I am quite at your service,” answered the stranger, politely bowing.
His companion walked on a few steps silently.
Pavel struggled within himself, trying to trip up the conjurer, and at the same time to stifle in his own heart something very sad, torturing, which was perhaps one of his mental tribulations. Raising his mask, he wiped his brow.
“I once saw a spirit,” he said, hesitatingly, unable to restrain his emotion; “I saw a shadow, sacred to me.…”
The stranger bowed slightly, following Pavel, who turned the corner of the square to the dimly-lighted river side.
“It was in Petersburg,” again began the count. He then related to his companion the celebrated fact, already made known somehow abroad, of his having seen the spirit of his ancestor; how, on a certain moonlight night, walking along the streets with his aide-de-camp, he had felt that between him and the wall of the house on the left side there rose all at once something in a long cloak and old-fashioned cocked hat—how he had “felt” that apparition, by the icy cold which had frozen his left side, and with what horror he had followed step by step the apparition, which noisily struck the pavement—it was the noise of stone against stone.
The apparition, invisible to the aide-de-camp, had addressed Pavel in a sad, reproachful voice: “Pavel, poor Pavel, poor prince, do not love the world too much; you will not remain long in it; fear the reproaches of thy conscience; live by the laws of justice … in life.…”