“You did not observe the fiend-like look he darted at me. O my friend, whatever may befall me, I will submit willingly to it, if I have succeeded in recalling you from your errors!”
“I thank you for your love, but I apprehend very much I am one of those unhappy men of whom you have been saying, that no arguments of reason can remove their delusion. I am sensible that my sensations has an immediate evidence, which overpowers every persuasion of the understanding---this I am sensible of, as often as I recall to my mind the apparition at the church-yard.”
“You view me with looks of pity,” the Duke continued, after a short pause, “I divine your thoughts. However, if you had seen what I have witnessed---”
“Then I should have been astonished at the artful delusion, and the dexterity of the Irishman.”
“And at the same time would not have been able to conceive, as well as myself, how it could have been performed in a natural manner.”
“I grant it; but I never conclude that any thing has been performed by supernatural means, because I cannot comprehend how it could have been effected in a natural manner. These was a time when you fancied the apparition in Amelia’s apartment to have been effected by supernatural means, and yet it was not so. Who would have the childish arrogance to fancy his intellectual faculties to be the scale of the powers of nature, and his knowledge the limit of human art? However, the apparition of the church-yard has some defects, which its author could not efface in spite of his dexterity, and which easily would have dispelled the delusion before the eyes of a cool observer. The Irishman could not give to the phantom the accent of Antonio’s voice, how skilfully soever he imitated his features. That the apparition did not move his eyes and lips, nor any limb, is also a suspicious circumstance, that proves the limits of the artificer’s skill. But what renders the reality of the apparition most suspicious is, undoubtedly, your friend’s ignorance of what his pretended spirit (consequently his proper self) told you at the church-yard; for if he had known any thing of it, he would not have concealed it from the Prince of Braganza, in whose arms he died, much less from you, in his farewell letter. Finally, if you consider what your tutor has told the Prince about his statue, which has been cut in wood during his imprisonment, you will find it very probable that the Irishman has made use of it in some manner or other for effecting that delusion.”
The Duke stared at me like a person suddenly roused from a profound sleep.—“Marquis!” he said, at length, “you have opened my eyes; but my unwont looks are unable to penetrate another fact I cannot expel from my memory.”
“Again, an apparition—?”
“Which, however, did not happen to me, but to my father.”
“You mean the apparition of Count San*?”