Part 19 (1/2)

There as a child she had wandered and gazed, a child with wings, and innocent, her soul full of dreams. Now she wandered again along the ramparts and battlements high as a man; the doves fluttered about her, the swans looked up at her ... and full of dejection for former innocence and youth, she wept and wept: no longer a brook, but topazes, rubies, tears of sin, that, rattling down, frightened the doves and the swans, which, indignant, thought that she was pelting them with stones. The doves flew away, and the swans, offended, turned their backs on her. Then she sat down in an embrasure--no wings now lay against the stone-work--and she folded her arms round her knees. She looked towards the horizon; behind it loomed other horizons, first pink, then silver; blue, then gold; behind the grey, pale and misty, and then fading away. Then beyond, the horizon became milk-white, like an opal, and in the reflection of the last rays of the setting sun, it seemed as if lakes were mirrored there; islands rose in the air, aerial paradises, watery streaks of blue sea, oceans of ether and light-quivering nothingness.

And Psyche bowed her head, full of sadness, and sobbed.

The world was not changed, but more beautiful than ever; gloriously beautiful loomed the ever-changing horizon. Yet Psyche sobbed, full of sadness. She knew that the horizons were pure delusions, and that behind them was the desert with the Sphinx. Oh! if she could once more believe in the aerial paradises, the purple seas, the golden regions with people of light, who lived under rosy bananas! Alas! had she not trod a paradise, the sweet Present, the adorable garden of a moment, so little and so short in duration? It was past, it was past! Oh, how her soul scorched, how her shoulders pained, how her eyes burned!

She wept and she sobbed, and hid her face in her hands. She did not notice that the wind was rising, that the horizon quivered, that clouds were speeding through the air, white colossi like towers and dragons, riders and horses. She did not see the changes in the sky; she did not see the going up and down of wings, of flaming wings in the silver lightning, that flashed from the sky; she did not hear the warning thunder, nor did she see the clouds emitting sparks. But suddenly she distinctly heard a voice:

”Psyche! Psyche!”

She looked up. Before her, she saw descending on broad wings a steed of pure light and flame. And she uttered a cry, that sounded in the air like an endless shout of gladness:

”Chimera!”

It was he. He descended. The basalt terrace trembled, as though shaken by an earthquake; under his hoofs the stone shot sparks, and he stood before her resplendent and beautiful.

”Chimera!” she cried, and folded her hands and sank down before him on her knees.

She could say nothing else. She was dazzled, and it seemed as though her soul ascended heavenward in the pure delight of love.

”Psyche!” sounded his voice of bronze, ”I have come down, for I love you. But I may not bear you any more on my back through the delusive regions of air, because you have committed sin. Psyche, it is your bounden duty to obey Emeralda's command. Go down to h.e.l.l and seek the Jewel.”

”Chimera, adored one, delight of my soul, oh, your splendour fills my eyes! Your word gives strength to my weakness! I feel it! You may not bear me away; I am unworthy of your wings. But I adore and bless you for coming! Chimera, Chimera, your splendour has beamed once more upon me! your voice has inspired me, and I will do what you say.... You let the light of hope break in upon me; new strength flows through my limbs. Chimera, I hope, I hope! I will go down into h.e.l.l; I will seek.... Shall I find? I know not.... But I hope! The horizon is quivering with hope and ether and the Future!

”Psyche!” sounded his voice again like bronze, ”be strong! Take heart! Descend! Do penance! Seek...! Once more you will see me....”

”Once more!”

”Be strong, take heart, do penance!”

He ascended, whilst Psyche remained kneeling. When he was high in the air, there came a peal of thunder, as if the heavens would burst asunder. The sky was dark, but lit up by the lightning. In the black sky, in the lightning flame, rose fearfully the three hundred towers. And the thunder-claps rumbled on, one after the other, as if the Past were peris.h.i.+ng in the last day....

With a joyful cry, Psyche hastened along the terraces, the battlements, ramparts, entered the castle, and went down the steps. Lower and lower she descended, lower than the vaults; and as she pa.s.sed them, she threw a kiss in the direction where the old king lay buried.... She descended still lower, and yet she heard the thunder pealing above, and the castle seemed to tremble to its very foundations.

She descended still lower: she descended very deep pits, built like towers reversed to the central nave of the earth. She descended step after step, thousands of steps, groping in the darkness. She walked with unerring foot, that felt for the next step, that detected the slippery stone; she felt and never hesitated. Another step and then another; again a pit, pit after pit, all the pits of the Past. Bats flew up and flapped their wings, spiders she felt crawling over her, an icy dampness fell like a chill wind upon her shoulders.

Deeper down she went, and deeper. It was pitch dark, and above she heard nothing more; she heard only the flapping of the gigantic bats, the droning of the envious spiders. But she defended herself with her little hand; as she descended, she beat about her, beat the bats away, seized a vampire, held it tightly by the neck, and strangled it. Her foot glided over toads, she slipped over snakes, but she got up again and beat the bats and fought with the vampires. The Chimera had so inspired her with strength, that she felt strong as a giant, young and courageous; he had filled her eyes with such light that she saw him in the darkness.

In the pitchy darkness his flaming wings were distinctly visible. And on she went descending; thick clouds of dust, the deepest shadows of Emeralda's transitoriness, rose up, but she kept breathing, never hesitating, and her foot felt instinctively the next step, and she struck at the bats and fought with the vampires. When she throttled them, a human cry was heard, and the echo sounded a thousand times like the anxious cry of a murder. But she was not afraid. She kept on descending....

She kept descending. At last she felt no more steps but voidness under her feet, and she sank ... like a feather, through heavier air; she sank, she sank deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper.... A black draught of air, an invisible wind, damp and chill, made her feel that she had pa.s.sed all the pits, that she was sinking outside them in the open air, invisible and black, thick as ink. Then she began to sink more slowly, and ... her feet touched ground.

Sounds soft and low, like the plaintive strains of a viol, rose up from afar, like music of the sea, the plaint of a thousand voices which never became melody.

The far-off sound continued quivering as an accompaniment of wind, of a black wind which blew, and overpowered the music of the sea. Sometimes it went a little higher, sometimes a little lower, and always remained the vague and distant incomprehensible harmony.

From where the wind came, from where the plaintive murmuring arose, thither would Psyche go. And with her foot she kept feeling, and with her outstretched hands, and on she went....

Long, long she went in the darkness, till the darkness became less opaque and lit up with phosphoric flickerings; and she saw:

That she was ascending a path between two inky seas.