THE ORACLE TELLS ME WONDERS
I forgot for a moment how impervious my mask and domino were to the hard stare of the old campaigner, and was preparing for an animated scuffle. It was only for a moment, of course; but the count cautiously drew a little back as the gasconading corporal, in blue uniform, white vest, and white gaiters—for my friend Gaillarde was as loud and swaggering in his assumed character as in his real one of a colonel of dragoons—drew near. He had already twice all but got himself turned out of doors for vaunting the exploits of Napoleon le Grand, in terrific mock-heroics, and had very nearly come to hand-grips with a Prussian hussar. In fact, he would have been involved in several sanguinary rows already, had not his discretion reminded him that the object of his coming there at all, namely, to arrange a meeting with an affluent widow, on whom he believed he had made a tender impression, would not have been promoted by his premature removal from the festive scene of which he was an ornament, in charge of a couple of gendarmes.
"Money! Gold! Bah! What money can a wounded soldier like your humble servant have amassed, with but his sword-hand left, which, being necessarily occupied, places not a finger at his command with which to scrape together the spoils of a routed enemy?"
"No gold from him," said the magician. "His scars frank him."
"Bravo, Monsieur le prophète! Bravissimo! Here I am. Shall I begin, mon sorcier, without further loss of time, to question you?"
Without waiting for an answer, he commenced, in stentorian tones. After half-a-dozen questions and answers, he asked: "Whom do I pursue at present?"
"Two persons."
"Ha! Two? Well, who are they?"
"An Englishman, whom if you catch, he will kill you; and a French widow, whom if you find, she will spit in your face."
"Monsieur le magicien calls a spade a spade, and knows that his cloth protects him. No matter! Why do I pursue them?"
"The widow has inflicted a wound on your heart, and the Englishman a wound on your head. They are each separately too strong for you; take care your pursuit does not unite them."
"Bah! How could that be?"
"The Englishman protects ladies. He has got that fact into your head. The widow, if she sees, will marry him. It takes some time, she will reflect, to become a colonel, and the Englishman is unquestionably young."
"I will cut his cock's-comb for him," he ejaculated with an oath and a grin; and in a softer tone he asked, "Where is she?"
"Near enough to be offended if you fail."
"So she ought, by my faith. You are right, Monsieur le prophète! A hundred thousand thanks! Farewell!" And staring about him, and stretching his lank neck as high as he could, he strode away with his scars, and white waistcoat and gaiters, and his bearskin shako.
I had been trying to see the person who sat in the palanquin. I had only once an opportunity of a tolerably steady peep. What I saw was singular. The oracle was dressed, as I have said, very richly, in the Chinese fashion. He was a figure altogether on a larger scale than the interpreter, who stood outside. The features seemed to me large and heavy, and the head was carried with a downward inclination! The eyes were closed, and the chin rested on the breast of his embroidered pelisse. The face seemed fixed, and the very image of apathy. Its character and pose seemed an exaggerated repetition of the immobility of the figure who communicated with the noisy outer world. This face looked blood-red; but that was caused, I concluded, by the light entering through the red silk curtains. All this struck me almost at a glance; I had not many seconds in which to make my observation. The ground was now clear, and the Marquis said, "Go forward, my friend."
I did so. When I reached the magician, as we called the man with the black wand, I glanced over my shoulder to see whether the Count was near.
No, he was some yards behind; and he and the Marquis, whose curiosity seemed to be by this time satisfied, were now conversing generally upon some subject of course quite different.
I was relieved, for the sage seemed to blurt out secrets in an unexpected way; and some of mine might not have amused the Count.
I thought for a moment. I wished to test the prophet. A Church-of-England man was a rara avis in Paris.
"What is my religion?" I asked.
"A beautiful heresy," answered the oracle instantly.
"A heresy?—and pray how is it named?"
"Love."
"Oh! Then I suppose I am a polytheist, and love a great many?"
"One."
"But, seriously," I asked, intending to turn the course of our colloquy a little out of an embarrassing channel, "have I ever learned any words of devotion by heart?"
"Yes."
"Can you repeat them?"
"Approach."
I did, and lowered my ear.
The man with the black wand closed the curtains, and whispered, slowly and distinctly, these words which, I need scarcely tell you, I instantly recognized:
"I may never see you more; and, oh! I that I could forget you!—go—farewell—for God's sake, go!"
I started as I heard them. They were, you know, the last words whispered to me by the Countess.
"Good Heavens! How miraculous! Words heard most assuredly, by no ear on earth but my own and the lady's who uttered them, till now!"
I looked at the impassive face of the spokesman with the wand. There was no trace of meaning, or even of a consciousness that the words he had uttered could possibly interest me.
"What do I most long for?" I asked, scarcely knowing what I said.
"Paradise."
"And what prevents my reaching it?"
"A black veil."
Stronger and stronger! The answers seemed to me to indicate the minutest acquaintance with every detail of my little romance, of which not even the Marquis knew anything! And I, the questioner, masked and robed so that my own brother could not have known me!
"You said I loved someone. Am I loved in return?" I asked.
"Try."
I was speaking lower than before, and stood near the dark man with the beard, to prevent the necessity of his speaking in a loud key.
"Does anyone love me?" I repeated.
"Secretly," was the answer.
"Much or little?" I inquired.
"Too well."
"How long will that love last?"
"Till the rose casts its leaves."
The rose—another allusion!
"Then—darkness!" I sighed. "But till then I live in light."
"The light of violet eyes."
Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had just pronounced it, is, at least, a superstition. How it exalts the imagination! How it enervates the reason! How credulous it makes us!
All this which, in the case of another I should have laughed at, most powerfully affected me in my own. It inflamed my ardor, and half crazed my brain, and even influenced my conduct.
The spokesman of this wonderful trick—if trick it were—now waved me backward with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes still fixed upon the group, and this time encircled with an aura of mystery in my fancy; backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw him raise his hand suddenly, with a gesture of command, as a signal to the usher who carried the golden wand in front.
The usher struck his wand on the ground, and, in a shrill voice, proclaimed: "The great Confu is silent for an hour."
Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort of blind of bamboo, which descended with a sharp clatter, and secured it at the bottom; and then the man in the tall fez, with the black beard and wand, began a sort of dervish dance. In this the men with the gold wands joined, and finally, in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the center of the circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little, quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a mill-wheel, and amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange performers mingled with the crowd, and the exhibition, for the time at least, ended.
The Marquis d'Harmonville was standing not far away, looking on the ground, as one could judge by his attitude and musing. I approached, and he said:
"The Count has just gone away to look for his wife. It is a pity she was not here to consult the prophet; it would have been amusing, I daresay, to see how the Count bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have asked him to introduce you."
With a beating heart, I accompanied the Marquis d'Harmonville.