He dropped the hand.
“Hark,” he said gravely, “there is danger before you, but where it lurks is hidden from me. Yet it is in no wise the open danger of war. If it should be a fall or other accident of travel, I would have you take these triangular malachites, they are of a particular nature. See, I myself carry one of them in this ring; they guard against falling from horse or coach. Take them with you and carry them ever on your breast, or if you have them set in a ring, cut away the gold behind them, for the stone must touch if it is to protect you. And here is a jasper. Do you see the design like a tree? It is very rare and most precious and good against stabbing in the dark and liquid poisons. Once more I pray you, my dear young gentleman, that you have a care, especially where women are concerned. Nothing definite is revealed to me, but there are signs of danger gleaming in the hand of a woman, yet I know nothing for a certainty, and it were well to guard also against false friends and traitorous servants, against cold waters and long nights.”
Ulrik Frederik accepted the gifts graciously, and did not neglect, the following day, to send the alchemist a costly necklace, as a token of his gratitude for his wise counsel and protecting stones. After that he proceeded directly to Spain without further interruption.
[CHAPTER X]
THE house seemed very quiet that spring day when the sound of horses’ hoofs had died away in the distance. In the flurry of leave-taking, the doors had been left open; the table was still set after Ulrik Frederik’s breakfast, with his napkin just as he had crumpled it at his plate, and the tracks of his great riding-boots were still wet on the floor. Over there by the tall pier-glass he had pressed her to his heart and kissed and kissed her in farewell, trying to comfort her with oaths and vows of a speedy return. Involuntarily she moved to the mirror as though to see whether it did not hold something of his image, as she had glimpsed it a moment ago, while locked in his arms. Her own lonely, drooping figure and pale, tear-stained face met her searching glance from behind the smooth, glittering surface.
She heard the street door close, and the lackey cleared the table. Ulrik Frederik’s favorite dogs, Nero, Passando, Rumor, and Delphine, had been locked in, and ran about the room, whimpering and sniffing his tracks. She tried to call them, but could not for weeping. Passando, the tall red fox-hound, came to her; she knelt down to stroke and caress the dog, but he wagged his tail in an absent-minded way, looked up into her face, and went on howling.
Those first days—how empty every thing was and dreary! The time dragged slowly, and the solitude seemed to hang over her, heavy and oppressive, while her longing would sometimes burn like salt in an open wound. Ay, it was so at first, but presently all this was no longer new, and the darkness and emptiness, the longing and grief, came again and again like snow that falls flake upon flake, until it seemed to wrap her in a strange, dull hopelessness, almost a numbness that made a comfortable shelter of her sorrow.
Suddenly all was changed. Every nerve was strung to the most acute sensitiveness, every vein throbbing with blood athirst for life, and her fancy teemed like the desert air with colorful images and luring forms. On such days she was like a prisoner who sees youth slip by, spring after spring, barren, without bloom, dull and empty, always passing, never coming. The sum of time seemed to be counted out with hours for pennies; at every stroke of the clock one fell rattling at her feet, crumbled, and was dust, while she would wring her hands in agonized life-hunger and scream with pain.
She appeared but seldom at court or in the homes of her family, for etiquette demanded that she should keep to the house. Nor was she in the mood to welcome visitors, and as they soon ceased coming, she was left entirely to herself. This lonely brooding and fretting soon brought on an indolent torpor, and she would sometimes lie in bed for days and nights at a stretch, trying to keep in a state betwixt waking and sleeping, which gave rise to fantastic visions. Far clearer than the misty dream pictures of healthy sleep, these images filled the place of the life she was missing.
Her irritability grew with every day, and the slightest noise was torture. Sometimes she would be seized with the strangest notions and with sudden mad impulses that might almost raise a doubt of her sanity. Indeed, there was perhaps but the width of a straw between madness and that curious longing to do some desperate deed, merely for the sake of doing it, without the least reason or even real desire for it.