‘Alice, is it you?’ I cried. Suddenly,
slowly quivering, the wide eyelids rose; dark piercing
eyes were fastened upon me, and at the same instant
lips too fastened upon me, warm, moist, smelling of
blood ... soft arms twined tightly round my neck,
a burning, full heart pressed convulsively to mine.
‘Farewell, farewell for ever!’ the dying
voice uttered distinctly, and everything vanished.
I got up, staggering like a drunken man, and passing
my hands several times over my face, looked carefully
about me. I found myself near the high road,
a mile and a half from my own place. The sun had
just risen when I got home.
All the following nights I awaited—and
I confess not without alarm—the appearance
of my phantom; but it did not visit me again.
I even set off one day, in the dusk, to the old oak,
but nothing took place there out of the common.
I did not, however, overmuch regret the discontinuance
of this strange acquaintance. I reflected much
and long over this inexplicable, almost unintelligible
phenomenon; and I am convinced that not only science
cannot explain it, but that even in fairy tales and
legends nothing like it is to be met with. What
was Alice, after all? An apparition, a restless
soul, an evil spirit, a sylphide, a vampire, or what?
Sometimes it struck me again that Alice was a woman
I had known at some time or other, and I made tremendous
efforts to recall where I had seen her.... Yes,
yes, I thought sometimes, directly, this minute, I
shall remember.... In a flash everything had
melted away again like a dream. Yes, I thought
a great deal, and, as is always the way, came to no
conclusion. The advice or opinion of others I
could not bring myself to invite; fearing to be taken
for a madman. I gave up all reflection upon it
at last; to tell the truth, I had no time for it.
For one thing, the emancipation had come along with
the redistribution of property, etc.; and for
another, my own health failed; I suffered with my
chest, with sleeplessness, and a cough. I got
thin all over. My face was yellow as a dead man’s.
The doctor declares I have too little blood, calls
my illness by the Greek name, ‘anaemia,’
and is sending me to Gastein. The arbitrator
swears that without me there’s no coming to
an understanding with the peasants. Well, what’s
one to do?
But what is the meaning of the piercingly-pure, shrill
notes, the notes of an harmonica, which I hear directly
any one’s death is spoken of before me?
They keep growing louder, more penetrating....
And why do I shudder in such anguish at the mere thought
of annihilation?
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
’Wage Du zu irren und zu traeumen!’—SCHILLER
This is what I read in an old Italian manuscript:—
