"Oh, no, I felt too much compassion for him, poor man! Indeed, I was very much touched. There is so little romance in this present day."
"What a charming, comprehensive word that is, my dear Mrs. Van Winkle!" laughed Sims. "It includes murder, highway robbery, and now, I see, other little offences!"
A good deal of amusement was caused by this peculiar revelation, and one can only imagine the narrator intended that such should be the result. I am confident she rarely expected to be taken seriously. If she could shock or astonish her audience by her utterances she was satisfied. She had certainly driven the ghosts from the field.
But when dinner was over, and the men had rejoined the ladies in that bower of embroideries and perfume where Mrs. Van Winkle received her guests, lapped in languorous repose on satin cushions, and no one's face could be distinguished under the dim, irreligious light of silk-shrouded lamps, then the narrator of abnormal experiences, being pressed by her hostess, began, without reluctance, without a shadow of hesitation,
"It will be five years ago next May, I was in Rome and alone. The prince had left me to go to Palermo—on business, as he said. I had only been married three years at this time, and though I cannot say I was happy, no!—I still loved my husband. I was not completely desillusionnée. I knew he was volage, but I had no reason to suspect that he was quite—how do you say?—estranged from me. I gave him a liberal allowance, over and above what had been settled on him at our marriage, and he always treated me with, well—with respect. He was not passionné, no—but I thought, enfin, I thought it was not his nature. Well! he went to Palermo, and I had a letter from him in the course of a few days, saying his business was advancing favorably, though slowly. He would probably be detained longer than he expected. I was not anxious, I was not uneasy about him—why should I be?—when I went to bed that night. That made my dream the more extraordinary, tout à fait saisissante. I saw him in a garden, under a tree. Beside him stood a dark woman, whose face was quite distinct. I could have drawn it. She gave him some fruit."
"Were they in the condition of Adam and Eve?" murmured Mrs. Van Winkle, from her pile of satin cushions.
"Oh, no," continued the princess, gravely, "she had on a yellow gown, trimmed with broderie Anglaise. I can see it now! He was dressed in gray tweed. He ate the fruit she gave him, and then gradually, gradually, I saw his face change color, and the expression, ah! il avait un air méchant. I had never seen him look like that before—he was almost green, his features hideously distorted. He fell down at her feet, and I knew that she had poisoned him. I woke with a scream!"
"No wonder. You must yourself have eaten something that disagreed with you, princess!" said Sims.
She shook her head. "No, but my dream disagreed with me! Ah! I was quite boulversée, I could not sleep again, and still I saw them distinctly before me. In the morning I rang for my maid, and said I would start for Palermo. My family tried to dissuade me from following my husband, but I said I knew some misfortune had happened to him, or would happen, if I did not go. What I had dreamed was a presentiment; and so persuaded of this was I, that when I reached Naples, though a great hurricane was blowing, and I am a dreadful sailor—je souffre horriblement—I insisted on embarking. They told me the steamer was a very bad one, and really not fit to put to sea in such weather, but I was firm. Que voulez vous? I was possessed with the idea. We had a terrible passage, but at last we reached Palermo, and I drove to the Hôtel des Palmes. I was dreadfully nervous; I scarcely dared ask after my husband, but they told me he was quite well—he was in the garden, so I followed him. I could not rest till I had seen, with my own eyes, that he did not look as he had done in my dream. I found him under a tree, a palm-tree, in his gray tweed suit, seated beside a brunette dressed in yellow—that Madame Moretto, who has poisoned his life ever since!"
"And does that account for his looking as he does—so very unwholesome—princess?" asked Mrs. Van Winkle.