第31章

Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.

"Ger.Lib.," c.iv.v.

(Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and favourite resort of an indolent population.One of this little party was a young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who, for the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie.One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on the back, said, "What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grown quite pale,--you tremble.Is it a sudden chill? You had better go home: these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English constitutions.""No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder.I cannot account for it myself."A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly, and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.

"I think I understand what you mean," said he; "and perhaps," he added, with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than yourself." Here, turning to the others, he added, "You must often have felt, gentlemen, each and all of you, especially when sitting alone at night, a strange and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away, and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness.Have you not often felt what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so, you can understand what our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night.""Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have defined exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me.

But how could my manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?""I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger, gravely; "they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."All the gentleman present then declared that they could comprehend, and had felt, what the stranger had described.

"According to one of our national superstitions," said Mervale, the Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel your blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is walking over the spot which shall be your grave.""There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common an occurrence," replied the stranger: "one sect among the Arabians holds that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death, or of some one dear to you.The African savage, whose imagination is darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque and the Terrible mingle with each other.""It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the stomach, a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan, with whom Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.

"Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitious presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and the supposed world without us? For my part, I think--""Ay, what do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.

"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and horror with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed, invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge of which we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses.""You are a believer in spirits, then?" said Mervale, with an incredulous smile.

"Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in yonder basin.Such beings may have passions and powers like our own--as the animalculae to which I have compared them.The monster that lives and dies in a drop of water--carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself--is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than the tiger of the desert.There may be things around us that would be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter.""And think you that wall never can be removed?" asked young Glyndon, abruptly."Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and immemorial as they are, merely fables?""Perhaps yes,--perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently.

"But who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and the lion,--to repine at and rebel against the law which confines the shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle speculations."Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet, and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.

"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.

The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.

"I never saw him before," said Mervale, at last.

"Nor I."