The Alkahest | Page 9

questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the

world obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there
were men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face
and its tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm
that was seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in
earlier days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy
now emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former
period of her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and
expressing a nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was
at the same time powerless over destiny.
When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if to
invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to God
alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and the
shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then hotter
than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the moving of
chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to serve the
dinner.
At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her
abstraction and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped
away her tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the
expression of pain that was stamped on every feature that she presently
seemed in the state of happy indifference which comes with a life
exempt from care. Whether it were that the habit of living in this house
to which infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive certain natural
effects that are imperceptible to the senses of others, but which persons
under the influence of excessive feeling are keen to discover, or
whether Nature, in compensation for her physical defects, had given
her more delicate sensations than better organized beings,--it is certain
that this woman had heard the steps of a man in a gallery built above
the kitchens and the servants' hall, by which the front house
communicated with the "back-quarter." The steps grew more distinct.
Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish

space and meet her other self, even a stranger would have heard the
foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to
the parlor.
The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong
step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, "Fire!" his
feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary gait
ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the
dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting
spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly
have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that
seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as
though two iron weights were striking them alternately. The mind
recognized at once either the heavy, undecided step of an old man or
the majestic tread of a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
servants' hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed in
the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading from the
parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the
sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the
armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by
the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna.
She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into the depths
of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the wall which she
knew was about to open, and which in fact was now pushed in with
such brusque violence that the poor woman herself seemed jarred by
the shock.
Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not