'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that you can catch the full force of the idea—I must try, however. You have often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature—brow, nose, lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits of flame—salamandrines—who sometimes existed out of their own element and lived and moved as mortals.
'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!—I would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human calculation!'
CHAPTER II.
MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS—THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE MIST—REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR
It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story:
'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course, nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I think in my native tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative with any French words that can just as well be translated into our vernacular.
'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely, and decidedly:
''You are here again! What do you want?'
''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,' answered Von Berg, 'who wishes——'
''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an unmistakably hissing sound. He wants nothing, and he is not the Baron Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him away—go away yourself—and never let me see you again unless you have something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'