THE PLAGUE IN MY CHAMBER.—THE MIDNIGHT SCENE ON THE ALTENBERG.
The Count of Nideck was in a dying condition. All that art might accomplish I had tried without avail, and at that moment, when life and death were struggling for the mastery, I was compelled to stand idly by and watch the sands of Time's hour-glass run out. Towards midnight, the Count seemed almost gone; his pulse beat feebly, and at times seemed to stop. Sometimes I thought the end was but the question of a few moments. At length, worn out with exhaustion and anxiety, I bid the weeping Sperver remain with his master while I repaired to the Tower to snatch a few moments' sleep.
A bright fire was burning in my chamber. I threw myself on the bed without removing my clothes, and soon fell into a heavy, troubled slumber. I slept thus, with my face turned towards the fire, whose rays danced upon the polished flagstones. After an hour, the fire suddenly started up, and as it often happens, the flame, rising and falling momentarily, beat upon the walls its great red wings and tired my eyelids. Lost in a vague slumber, I half opened my eyes to see whence came these alternate lights and shadows, when I was brought wide awake by an appalling sight.
"I RAISED MYSELF ON MY ELBOW AND STARED FEARFULLY IN THE DIRECTION."
At the further end of the hearth, hardly revealed by the light of a few glowing embers, a dark profile was dimly visible,—the profile of the Black Plague. At first, I thought it an hallucination, the natural offspring of my feverish thoughts. I raised myself on my elbow, and stared fearfully in the direction, real or fancied, of the image. It was she indeed! Calm and motionless she sat, her hands clasped about her knees, just as I had seen her in the snow, with her long, thin neck, sharp, hooked nose, and thin lips tightly closed,—and she was warming herself before the fire.
I was horrified. How could the creature have got into my room? How could she have climbed the Tower, beneath which precipices yawned on every side? Everything that Sperver had told me concerning her mysterious power seemed no whit exaggerated. The vision of Lieverlé growling against the wall passed before me like a flash. I huddled close in the alcove, hardly daring to breathe, and watching this immovable silhouette as a mouse watches a cat from the bottom of its hole. The old woman stirred no more than the chimney-breast cut in the solid rock, and her lips moved as she mumbled inarticulate words.
My heart beat painfully fast, and my fear increased from moment to moment, as I gazed on the motionless figure amid the perfect silence. This lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, when the fire catching a pine splinter, the flame leaped up and a few rays penetrated to the end of the room. This flash sufficed to show me the aged woman dressed in an old gown of purple brocade that shimmered violet and red in different lights, with a heavy bracelet on her left wrist and a gold arrow stuck through her thick, gray hair, which was coiled up on the back of her head. It was like an apparition of past ages.
Still, the Plague could have no hostile designs upon me, or she would have profited by my slumber to execute them. This thought was beginning to reassure me, when she suddenly got up and moved slowly towards my bed, holding in her hand a torch which she had just lighted at the fire. I now observed that her eyes were fixed and haggard. I made an effort to rise and cry out, but not a muscle of my body would obey my will, not a sound passed my lips, and the old witch, bending over me between the parted curtains, fixed her eyes on me with a strange smile. I tried to spring upon her and cry for help, but her glance paralyzed me as the snake's look charms the tiny bird. During this dumb contemplation, each second seemed to me an eternity. What was she about to do? I was prepared for anything. Suddenly she turned her head, listened, and then crossing the room with a rapid step, she opened the door. At last I had recovered a little courage; an effort of the will brought me to my feet, as if acted upon by an invisible spring, and I followed on the heels of the old woman, who with one hand was holding her torch above her head, and with the other kept the hall-door wide open.