“He told me to let it rest upon my brow,” I answered.
“Then you must remove your head-gear.”
This I did at once, casting it upon the sand. Then, breathless with excitement, knowing how much depended upon the elucidation of the Great Mystery, I took the strangely-shaped object that had experienced so many vicissitudes, and, while Uzanne riveted his dark, serious eyes upon mine, placed it upon my forehead. Pressing its inner edge against my brow, it fitted tightly, the horns gripping my temples with an unpleasant pressure that caused them to throb violently.
“Dieu!” cried Octave, grasping my left hand suddenly. “Tell me—tell me quickly—what ails you?”
I was staggering as one intoxicated. I heard his voice, but it seemed distant, even sepulchral, for when the cold metal came in contact with my brow, I experienced sensations excruciatingly painful. Across the top of my skull and through my temples and eyes sharp pains shot, producing an acute sensitiveness, as though flesh and brain were being torn asunder by sharp hooks. In the first acute spasm of suffering, I cried aloud, causing Uzanne considerable anxiety. For a few moments the agony was intense. The tapering ends of the Crescent pressed into my temples, causing them to shoot in spasms that lancinated every nerve, and I felt myself on the point of fainting under the horrible cruciation.
With a sudden impetuous movement I tried to doff the semicircle of metal, but whether I did not pull it evenly, or whether my head had swollen after I had assumed it, I could not tell. All I knew was, that I could not disengage my head from its tightening grip. Clenching my teeth, I struggled against the nauseating faintness that crept over me, and gradually the sudden pangs decreased, until the maddening racking of my brain was succeeded by a curious tranquillisation that caused me to involuntarily reconcile myself to circumstances.
Octave’s presence, and indeed all my immediate surroundings, seemed to fade from my sight, and in their place there was conjured up in the vista down which I seemed to gaze a vision indistinct at first, but gradually becoming more and more vivid. With my face to the east, a feeling of calm pleasure and enchantment overspread me as my vision seemed to extend to treble its normal range.
It was an extraordinary phenomenon.
With my eyes fixed upon the purple mountain fading into a shadowy outline against the clear and brilliant sky, I appeared to gradually approach it. As it grew larger and more distinct, I was enabled to take in the details of the scene, and become enraptured by its charm. The sides of the mountain were clothed by luxuriant foliage and sweet-smelling flowers, and when, in the strange hallucination which had taken possession of me, I approached still nearer, I suddenly experienced a conviction that I had on a previous occasion gazed upon the same scene.