forward to the table where my wife was, I turned down the flame of the lamp. The burning spirit in the chafing-dish cast a flickering and ghastly light through the room. Strange, black shadows like phantoms leapt and danced about the walls and ceiling, while the uncouth retorts, stills, phials, and electric apparatus loomed duskily and mysteriously in the uncertain light.
As I looked about me, I could with difficulty distinguish the black form of the Italian, as he glided noiselessly through the gloom. I lost sight of him, but was conscious that he was behind me—at my elbow. A strange feeling of faintness suddenly came over me, from which I was roused in an instant by a few low words, spoken by my wife at my side.
“Fools that you are!” she said, “you would seek for the Great Secret, and yet you still stumble blindly on, from error to error, from lie to lie.”
I shuddered from head to foot, and gazed on her with unspeakable feelings of terror. Yet she spoke calmly and distinctly,—repeating slowly what she had just said, seeing that I was at first too agitated to understand her.
I could hardly believe my senses, as she continued to speak; she seemed to understand the whole of our operations, and pointed out, with a strange tone of contemptuous authority, several mistakes we had made, and cleared up, also, several points on which we had been in doubt.
It was the wonderful knowledge which she exhibited that struck me with terror. Up to that moment I had fancied she was entirely ignorant of the true nature of our researches; nay, from many conversations I had had with her, I felt convinced she knew nothing more than the bare rudiments of chemistry.
As she continued to speak I felt the strange faintness that had come over me before, again stealing about me; but I was conscious throughout that Maffi was close behind me, though I did not see him.
Indistinctly, I perceived my wife rise from her seat; she laid her hand upon my arm, and led me to one of the furnaces; then, still in the same low, clear voice, she pointed out an error that would have been fatal to our undertaking, if persisted in. I heard her drowsily, as if in a dream; but, nevertheless, I felt in my mind her remarks were correct. A peculiar humming noise now sounded painfully in my ears, and the light in the room seemed changed to a deep rose colour. I saw my wife suddenly raise her arms and press her hands violently against her temples, and a piercing shriek rang through the air. Casting off my faintness with a desperate effort, I caught her as she was falling to the ground. At this instant I became aware that Antonio had opened the door leading to the garden, and rushing past him I stumbled forward, bearing the fainting form of my wife into the cool night air.
Some days elapsed before Louisa entirely recovered. The physician who attended her said she seemed to be suffering from the effects of some narcotic poison. I told him she had been seized with fainting while sitting with me in my laboratory. He said, and I agreed with him, that the heat and closeness of the air in the room, together with the escape, perhaps, of some volatile essence, had brought on the attack. He advised that she should not again venture into its precincts.
While my wife was unwell I seldom entered my work-rooms, except for a short time now and then, to see how Antonio was progressing. He spoke little, but continued his work laboriously. I refrained from alluding to the events which had occurred, but I noticed, with a strange feeling at my heart, that he seemed to be acting entirely on the advice which had fallen from my wife on that memorable night. I said nothing, but watched him going on quietly and deliberately, step by step, correcting the errors she had pointed out, and proceeding in the manner she had indicated.
Up to this period I had never spoken to Louisa of the night in the laboratory. However, as she was now well enough to be down stairs, and nothing ailing her more than a little weakness and languor, I thought I would ask her for some explanation. To my surprise, she denied all knowledge of what had taken place; she asserted she never did and never could understand chemistry; that she was perfectly ignorant of our experiments and ultimate intentions, and again repeated she had no recollection whatever of the events of that strange night.
I would have felt angry and indignant at these strange assertions—indeed, words of reproach were on my tongue—but when I looked at her ingenuous face I could not help feeling she spoke the truth. Many times I tried afterwards to lead her to talk about the object of our experiments, but I could only get one reply from her, that she was entirely ignorant of the whole subject.
All she could tell me of the night in the laboratory was this. She remembered my igniting the spirits-of-wine in the chafing-dish, and then coming forward to dim the light in the lamp. She recollected also that as I lowered the flame she saw Antonio step up noiselessly behind me; he had a mask or respirator on the lower part of his face. She then saw him distinctly pour a few drops from a phial into the chafing-dish, and she remembered that the flame changed from violet to a deep rose colour. All this occupied only a few seconds, after which the Italian stepped backwards into the shadow, holding out his arms towards her, as if making mesmeric passes. She remembered nothing more.
Her story never varied: but I could not help thinking it was the result of an overheated imagination; yet the fact that she had shown herself perfectly acquainted with the science of chemistry, and with our intricate experiments, remained deeply rooted in my mind. I could not think of it without a feeling of mysterious awe.
I went out of town for a few days with Louisa, and on my return I visited the laboratory. I found Maffi in the study, leisurely engaged in perusing a manuscript copy of one of Geber’s mystic works on alchymy. On my asking him how matters were progressing, he told me that at present they were stationary. He was and had been waiting for me for some time.
