The Weird Picture

by John R. Carling

At length, despite the frowning faces of the portraits on the walls and the threatening lances of the knights, I advanced, with one hand on the pistol in my pocket. I could have wished myself for the time being one of those students of the black art who, successfully passing through the fabled hall in Padua, are said never afterwards to have cast a shadow; for, as I moved before the moonlit casements, a black shape moved with me along the floor of the hall, and when I had passed out of the moonlight, the candle I carried in my trembling hand caused the shadow to start up on the adjacent wall as though it were some sable familiar attendant on my movements.

In the middle of the gallery, upon a small table and reared up against the wall, I could perceive in a massive frame a large picture, which I took to be the thing I was in quest of, but before I had got near enough to obtain a glimpse of it an unfortunate accident occurred. I dropped my candle, and the moon at this moment being obscured by clouds, I was left in darkness.

The superstitious fancies of my overwrought mind were for the moment overcome by the annoyance I felt at being thus baffled on the edge of discovery. Here was I at last standing before Angelo's great picture, the picture that had lifted him to fame, the picture that some critics had assigned to a hand other than his, the picture he had been so anxious to conceal from my view, the picture whose principal figure the Baronet averred was copied from the murdered dead, the picture whose figure, so the servants whispered, had the power of descending from the canvas, and yet beyond the fact of its size I was precluded by the darkness from learning anything about it.

It stood glimmering faintly through the gloom, and eluding my power to penetrate its secret. I strained my eyes to the utmost, and after a time they became accustomed to the darkness; but all I could discern on the canvas were two figures, one erect, the other prostrate, both which seemed to be returning my stare like faces in a mirror. Faint whisperings seemed to be trembling on the air around, and more than once I thought I heard a subdued laugh.

I passed my hand over the canvas, not without the weird fancy that it might be seized in a cold clasp. It is needless to say that my sense of touch did not add anything to my knowledge.

Just as I was preparing to return for another candle the moon emerged triumphantly from an array of defiant clouds, and its light, increasing almost to the brightness of day, enabled me to obtain a clear view of the picture.

My first feeling was one of disappointment.

What I had expected to see I do not quite know: something alarming, probably.

There was, however, nothing alarming on the canvas before me. It was a painting that Gérôme himself might have been proud to own, so classic and finished was its character. Indeed, I cannot give a better idea of it than by saying that in the pose of the two figures, and in the arrangement of the details, it bore a considerable resemblance to the work of that great master on the same subject, save that in Angelo's composition the figures of the conspirators were wanting.