And now he distinctly saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form, gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud.They appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or expanded like the folds of a serpent.As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy.None of these apparitions heeded him.His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same as if the mortal were not there.Slowly they glided round and aloft, till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable horror the delight he had before experienced.By degrees this object shaped itself to his sight.It was as that of a human head covered with a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes that froze the marrow of his bones.Nothing else of the face was distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the chamber.
The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan, and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence.
Its form was veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living.It seemed rather to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker.All fancies, the most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone.All else so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like.But that burning glare so intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms.As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,--his hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze,--the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region.I am the Dweller of the Threshold.What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise?
Mine is the wisdom of the countless ages.Kiss me, my mortal lover." And the Horror crawled near and nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his cheek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no more till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found himself in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice, and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and whistling a Calabrian love-air.
