Silently she lifted her long white hand. In the dark sky, where her finger was pointing, a comet flashed, a reddish streak among the tiny stars.
'How am I to understand you?' I began, 'Or, as that comet floats between the planets and the sun, do you float among men … or what?'
But Alice's hand was suddenly passed before my eyes…. It was as though a white mist from the damp valley had fallen on me….
'To Italy! to Italy!' I heard her whisper. 'This night is a great night!'
XII
The mist cleared away from before my eyes, and I saw below me an immense plain. But already, by the mere breath of the warm soft air upon my cheeks, I could tell I was not in Russia; and the plain, too, was not like our Russian plains. It was a vast dark expanse, apparently desert and not overgrown with grass; here and there over its whole extent gleamed pools of water, like broken pieces of looking-glass; in the distance could be dimly descried a noiseless motionless sea. Great stars shone bright in the spaces between the big beautiful clouds; the murmur of thousands, subdued but never-ceasing, rose on all sides, and very strange was this shrill but drowsy chorus, this voice of the darkness and the desert….
'The Pontine marshes,' said Alice. 'Do you hear the frogs? do you smell the sulphur?'
'The Pontine marshes….' I repeated, and a sense of grandeur and of desolation came upon me. 'But why have you brought me here, to this gloomy forsaken place? Let us fly to Rome instead.'
'Rome is near,' answered Alice…. 'Prepare yourself!'
We sank lower, and flew along an ancient Roman road. A bullock slowly lifted from the slimy mud its shaggy monstrous head, with short tufts of bristles between its crooked backward-bent horns. It turned the whites of its dull malignant eyes askance, and sniffed a heavy snorting breath into its wet nostrils, as though scenting us.
'Rome, Rome is near…' whispered Alice. 'Look, look in front….'
I raised my eyes.
What was the blur of black on the edge of the night sky? Were these the lofty arches of an immense bridge? What river did it span? Why was it broken down in parts? No, it was not a bridge, it was an ancient aqueduct. All around was the holy ground of the Campagna, and there, in the distance, the Albanian hills, and their peaks and the grey ridge of the old aqueduct gleamed dimly in the beams of the rising moon….
We suddenly darted upwards, and floated in the air before a deserted ruin. No one could have said what it had been: sepulchre, palace, or castle…. Dark ivy encircled it all over in its deadly clasp, and below gaped yawning a half-ruined vault. A heavy underground smell rose in my face from this heap of tiny closely-fitted stones, whence the granite facing of the wall had long crumbled away.
'Here,' Alice pronounced, and she raised her hand: 'Here! call aloud three times running the name of the mighty Roman!'
'What will happen?'
'You will see.'
I wondered. '
XIII
The last echoes of my voice had hardly died away, when I heard….
It is difficult to say what I did hear. At first there reached me a confused din the ear could scarcely catch, the endlessly-repeated clamour of the blare of trumpets, and the clapping of hands. It seemed that somewhere, immensely far away, at some fathomless depth, a multitude innumerable was suddenly astir, and was rising up, rising up in agitation, calling to one another, faintly, as if muffled in sleep, the suffocating sleep of ages. Then the air began moving in dark currents over the ruin…. Shades began flitting before me, myriads of shades, millions of outlines, the rounded curves of helmets, the long straight lines of lances; the moonbeams were broken into momentary gleams of blue upon these helmets and lances, and all this army, this multitude, came closer and closer, and grew, in more and more rapid movement…. An indescribable force, a force fit to set the whole world moving, could be felt in it; but not one figure stood out clearly…. And suddenly I fancied a sort of tremor ran all round, as if it were the rush and rolling apart of some huge waves…. '
There is no word in the tongue of man to express the horror which clutched at my heart…. I felt that were that head to raise its eyes, to part its lips, I must perish on the spot! 'Alice!' I moaned, 'I won't, I can't, I don't want Rome, coarse, terrible Rome…. Away, away from here!'
'Coward!' she whispered, and away we flew. I just had time to hear behind me the iron voice of the legions, like a peal of thunder … then all was darkness.
XIV
'Look round,' Alice said to me, 'and don't fear.'
I obeyed—and, I remember, my first impression was so sweet that I could only sigh. A sort of smoky-grey, silvery-soft, half-light, half-mist, enveloped me on all sides. At first I made out nothing: I was dazzled by this azure brilliance; but little by little began to emerge the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests; a lake lay at my feet, with stars quivering in its depths, and the musical plash of waves. The fragrance of orange flowers met me with a rush, and with it—and also as it were with a rush—came floating the pure powerful notes of a woman's young voice. This fragrance, this music, fairly drew me downwards, and I began to sink … to sink down towards a magnificent marble palace, which stood, invitingly white, in the midst of a wood of cypress. The music flowed out from its wide open windows, the waves of the lake, flecked with the pollen of flowers, splashed upon its walls, and just opposite, all clothed in the dark green of orange flowers and laurels, enveloped in shining mist, and studded with statues, slender columns, and the porticoes of temples, a lofty round island rose out of the water….
'Isola Bella!' said Alice…. 'Lago Maggiore….'
I murmured only 'Ah!' and continued to drop. The woman's voice sounded louder and clearer in the palace; I was irresistibly drawn towards it…. I wanted to look at the face of the singer, who, in such music, gave voice to such a night. We stood still before the window.
In the centre of a room, furnished in the style of Pompeii, and more like an ancient temple than a modern drawing-room, surrounded by Greek statues, Etruscan vases, rare plants, and precious stuffs, lighted up by the soft radiance of two lamps enclosed in crystal globes, a young woman was sitting at the piano. Her head slightly bowed and her eyes half-closed, she sang an Italian melody; she sang and smiled, and at the same time her face wore an expression of gravity, almost of sternness … a token of perfect rapture! She smiled … and Praxiteles' Faun, indolent, youthful as she, effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone. Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, the splendour and sweet fragrance of the night, moved to the heart by the picture of this youthful, serene, and untroubled happiness, I utterly forgot my companion, I forgot the strange way in which I had become a witness of this life, so remote, so completely apart from me, and I was on the point of tapping at the window, of speaking….
I was set trembling all over by a violent shock—just as though I had touched a galvanic battery. I looked round…. The face of Alice was—for all its transparency—dark and menacing; there was a dull glow of anger in her eyes, which were suddenly wide and round….
'Away!' she murmured wrathfully, and again whirling and darkness and giddiness…. Only this time not the shout of legions, but the voice of the singer, breaking on a high note, lingered in my ears….
We stopped. The high note, the same note was still ringing and did not cease to ring in my ears, though I was breathing quite a different air, a different scent … a breeze was blowing upon me, fresh and invigorating, as though from a great river, and there was a smell of hay, smoke and hemp. The long-drawn-out note was followed
