The Purple Cloud

amethyst, topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, two in the east façade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like limelight, the forever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a nightlong vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again⁠—twice within these last void and idle six months⁠—I have suddenly run, bawling out, from this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past of this earth, and moaning: “alone, alone⁠ ⁠… all alone, alone, alone⁠ ⁠… alone, alone.⁠ ⁠…” For events precisely resembling eruptions take place in my brain; and one spangled midnight⁠—ah, how spangled!⁠—I may kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, and awestruck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven.

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But it was not to write of this⁠—of all this⁠—!

Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.⁠ ⁠… But why I hesitate to admit to myself what I know, is not clear. If They speak to me, I may surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their peer.

Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, vegetation.⁠ ⁠… There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king. The mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit.

The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most parts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviously degenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank abundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on a sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circular shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through⁠—

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It shall be written now:

I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices.

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I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I have not heard them for twenty years!

But today⁠—distinctly⁠—breaking in with brawling impassioned suddenness upon my consciousness.⁠ ⁠… I heard.

This late far niente and vacuous inaction here have been undermining my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon today, I said to myself:

“I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from it, to another, sweeter work⁠—not of building, but of destroying⁠—not of Heaven, but of Hell⁠—not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. Constantinople⁠—beware!” I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was on my feet: and as I stood⁠—again, again⁠—I heard: the startlingly sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: “Go! go!” and the other: “Not there⁠ ⁠… ! where you like,⁠ ⁠… but not there⁠ ⁠… ! for your life!”

I did not⁠—for I could not⁠—go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch shivering.

These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I used to call “the two Voices” were not in reality two strong instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less force. But today doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very mad, can I ever doubt again.

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I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I cannot understand.

There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, when I must have been very young⁠—I fancy at some college or school in England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about certain “Black” and “White” Powers, and of their strife for this world. He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a paunch. His forehead atop,