Prince Zaleski

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Prince Zaleski

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Title: Prince Zaleski
Author: M.P. Shiel
Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10709]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ZALESKI ***

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PRINCE ZALESKI
M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel

_Come now, and let us reason together._ ISAIAH
_Of the strange things that befell the valiant Knight in the Sable
Mountain; and how he imitated the penance of Beltenebros._
CERVANTES
[Greek: All'est'ekeino panta lekta, panta de tolmaeta;] SOPHOCLES
1895
TO
MY DEAR MOTHER
CONTENTS
The Race of Orven
The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks
The S.S.

THE RACE OF ORVEN
Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
Zaleski--victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having
renounced the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star,
he had passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I,
to whom, more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate
mind had been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.
But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the
general attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a

latent mistrust of the _dénoûment_ of that dark plot, drew me to his
place of hermitage.
I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through
which the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
finally put up my _calèche_ in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
behind the domain.
As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred
how much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed
in the manner of a Roman atrium, and from the oblong pool of turgid
water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly squealing
at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the corridors
running round the open space, and thence pursued my way through a
mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length of
passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
ricochets to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.
After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and near
its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling of
which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose lights
around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in silent guard
on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin. One was a
post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the
other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince's only
attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into
a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding to him, I pushed

without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.
The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike lampas
of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a certain
incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled me with
amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this light, and
the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the bhang of
the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be