The magician paused an instant, his eyes fixed and dilated. He was a seer. All about him disappeared, and his fiction remained the only reality. Daniele trembled, for he too was able to see through the eyes of the other.
"Ah, the white spot on the shoulder, too! He has raised the armor. The spot, the spot! the hereditary mark of the race of Pelops 'of the ivory shoulder'! Is he not indeed the King of kings?"
The rapid, half-broken utterances of the seer were like a succession of flashes whereby he himself was dazzled. He had astonished even himself by that sudden apparition, that unexpected discovery which illumined the shadows of his mind, because exterior reality, and almost tangible. How had he been able to discover that spot on Agamemnon's shoulder? From what abyss of his memory had suddenly surged up that detail so strange, yet precise and decisive as a mark that affords recognition of a body dead since the preceding day?
"You were there!" exclaimed Daniele, intoxicated. "It was you yourself that lifted that armor and that mask! If you have really seen what you have just described, you are no longer a man!"
"I have seen! I have seen!"
Again he became an actor in his own drama, and it was with a violent palpitation that he heard, from the lips of a living person, the words of the drama—the very words that were to be spoken in the episode itself: "If you have really seen what you have described, you are no longer a man." From that instant, the explorer of sepulchers took on the aspect of a noble hero fighting against the ancient destiny that had risen from the ashes of the Atridæ to contaminate and overthrow him.
"Not with impunity," he continued, "does a man open tombs and gaze upon the faces of the dead—and what dead! He lives alone with his sister, the sweetest creature that ever has breathed the air of earth—alone with her, in the dwelling full of light and silence, as in a prayer, a consecration. Now, imagine one that unconsciously drinks poison, a philter, I know not what impure thing, which poisons his blood and corrupts his thoughts—suddenly, while his soul is at peace. Imagine this terrible evil, this vengeance of the dead! He is suddenly seized by an unholy passion; he becomes the miserable, trembling prey of a monster; he fights a desperate, secret fight, without truce, without mercy, day and night, every hour, every moment—all the more atrocious the more the innocent pity of the poor creature inclines toward his evil. How can this man be freed? From the very beginning of the tragedy, as soon as the innocent one begins to speak, it is evident that she is destined to die. And all that is said and done in the episodes, all that is expressed by the music, and by the songs and dances of the interludes, serves to lead her slowly but inexorably toward death. She is the equal of Antigone. In her brief, tragic hour, she passes accompanied by the light of hope and the shadow of presentiment; she passes accompanied by songs and tears, by the noble love that offers joy, by the mad love that engenders mourning; and she never pauses except to fall asleep on the cold, clear waters of the fountain that called to her from the solitudes with its continual murmur. Hardly has her brother killed her when he receives from her, through death, the gift of his redemption. 'All stain,' he cries, 'is effaced from my soul! I have become wholly pure! All the sanctity of my former love has reëntered my soul like a torrent of light. Were she here now, all my thoughts of her would be pure as lilies. Were she to rise again, she could walk over my heart as over immaculate snow. Now she is perfect; now she can be adored as a divinity. I will lay her in the deepest of my sepulchers, and around her I will lay all my treasures.' Thus, the act of death, into which he has been drawn by his lucid madness, becomes an act of purification and of liberation, marking the defeat of ancient Destiny. Emerging from the symphonic ocean, the ode shall sing of the victory of man, shall illumine the darkness of the catastrophe with an unknown light, and shall elevate to the summit of music the first word of the Drama renewed."
"The gesture of Perseus!" exclaimed Daniele, still under the spell of exaltation. "At the end of the tragedy you cut off the head of the Moira, and show it to the multitude, ever young and ever-new, which shall bring the spectacle to a close amid great cries of enthusiasm."
Both saw, as in a dream, the marble theater on the Janiculum, the multitude swayed by the idea of truth and of beauty, the illimitable starry Roman sky; they saw the frenzied multitude descending the slope of the hill, bearing in their rude hearts the confused revelation of poetry; they heard the clamor prolonging itself in the darkness of the immortal city.
"And now good-by, Daniele," said the master, reminded of his need to hasten, as if some one waited for him or called him.