[THE SECRET WITNESS.]
BY B. S. INGEMANN.
In the year 1816 there lived in Copenhagen an elderly lady, Froken F----, of whom it was known that she sometimes involuntarily saw what was not visible to anyone else. She was a tall, thin, grave-looking person, with large features, and an expressive countenance. Her dark, deep-set eyes had a strange glance, and she saw much better than most people in the twilight; but she was so deaf, that people had to speak very loudly to her before she could catch their words, and when a number of persons were speaking at the same time in a room, she could hear nothing but an unintelligible murmur. A sort of magnetic clairvoyance had, doubtless, in the somewhat isolated condition in which she was placed, been awakened in her mind, without, however, her being thrown into any peculiar state. She only seemed at times to be labouring under absence of mind, or to have fallen into deep thought, and then she was observed to fix her eyes upon some object invisible to all others. What she saw at those moments were most frequently the similitude of some absent person, or images of the future, which were always afterwards realized. Thus she had often foreseen unexpected deaths, and other unlooked-for fatal accidents. As she seldom beheld in her visions anything pleasing, she was regarded by many as a bird of ill omen, and she therefore did not visit a number of families; those, however, who knew her intimately both respected and loved her. She was quiet and unpretending, and it was but rarely that she said anything, unsolicited, of the results of her wonderful faculty.
She was a frequent guest in a family with whom she was a great favourite. The master of the house was an historical painter, and his wife was an excellent musician. The deaf old lady was a good judge of paintings, and extremely fond of them; also, hard of hearing as she was, music had always a great effect upon her; she could add in fancy what she did not hear to what she did hear; she had been very musical herself in her youthful days, and when she saw fingers flying over the pianoforte, she imagined she heard the music, even when anyone, to dupe her, moved their fingers back and forwards over the instrument, but without playing on it.
One day she was sitting on a sofa in the drawing-room at the house of the above-mentioned family, engaged in some handiwork. The artist had a visitor who was a very lively, witty, satirical person, and they were standing together near a window, discoursing merrily; they often laughed during their conversation, and the tones of their voices seemed to change, occasionally, as if they were imitating some one, whereupon their hilarity invariably increased, which, however, was far from being as harmless and goodnatured as mirth and gaiety generally were in that house.
When the visit was over, and the artist had accompanied his friend to the door, and returned to the drawing-room, the old lady asked him who had been with him.
He mentioned the name of his lively friend, whom, he said, he thought she knew very well.
'Oh, yes, I know him well enough,' she replied; 'but the other?'
'What other?' asked the painter, starting.
'Why the tall man with the long thin face, who stood yonder; he with the dark, rough, uncombed-looking hair, and the bushy eyebrows--he who so often laid his hand on his breast, and pointed upwards, especially when you and your merry friend laughed heartily.'