Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/61

Rh crossed himself, and stopped short.

"Too late, the evil has come," said he.

"What evil?" keeper.

"Didn't you see the star shoot?"

"Certainly."

"It will be transformed into letawitza."

"How is that?"

"In every shooting star there lives a demon which falls upon the earth," replied the gamekeeper in a troubled voice. "If at the instant when one perceives it he recites a certain formula, the witchcraft is conjured away, but if the star touches the earth it takes the form of a woman of great beauty, with long blonde hair which flows and glistens like stars. This beautiful creature is gifted with a strange power over every human soul. She draws young persons to her in the golden network falling over her white shoulders. At night, when all sleep, she bends over them and embraces them, - embraces them pitilessly, until they fall dead."

The gamekeeper had not finished his recital when we seemed to hear afar off, as it were, a deep sigh. This wail burst upon the solemn silence which hung over this sombre copse in the midst of the birches with their perpetually agitated leaves, whose trunks, white as the dead in their winding-sheets, seemed to stand upright around us, mute, and pointing the finger at us.

"What was that?" I asked.

"An undine, or possibly a roussalka; perhaps even the letawitza."

"I thought it was a bittern, rather."

"Well, call it so, it is a bittern," returned the gamekeeper with a sort of pity. "In any case we'd better continue our course."

We had taken but a few steps when a flame about the height of a man rose up beside us in a thicket of dwarf alders. It waved to us, bowed down to the earth, and then began to leap before us as if it had a mind to accompany us.

"A will-o'-the-wisp!"

"The good Lord grant it may be only a will-o'-the-wisp!" said the gamekeeper in a low tone; "but I'm afraid the day will not end well"

"Are there some marshes near here?"

"Yes, certainly. There is even a pond. It must be off here to our right."

Reaching the end of our path, we saw, through the thicket, what seemed a mirror reflecting the light of tapers. I went towards it.

"You are not going to expose your soul to such danger?" groaned the gamekeeper.

Without replying to him, I parted the branches and opened for myself a way to the edge of the pool. The will-o'-the-wisp had disappeared, but the bittern renewed its melancholy cry. The gamekeeper recited his conjuration aloud. We stood upon the border of a large sheet of water, which, lighted by the moon, stretched out at our feet. Some alder-bushes, erect among the brambles, were mirrored mysteriously in the lake. Their roots bathed in it, their long branches trailed in it like floating hair. It was both sad and impressive.

Suddenly, a childish laughter burst forth, pure, clear, and mocking like the tinkling of a silver bell. Bubbles rose to the surface of the water. Luminous little waves agitated it, a thousand sparkles played about each other on the pool, and, in the midst of a whirl of foam, we saw come forth a young woman of strange beauty. Her thick blonde hair, overflowing her marble shoulders, diffused itself in a starry shower. She fixed upon us two large black eyes, radiant and full of mockery.

"God have mercy on my poor soul!" cried the gamekeeper. "Shut your eyes!" and he drew me along. "We must fly!" repeated he in a trembling voice, "fly! or it is all up with us."

A second burst of laughter, yet more Satanic than the first, resounded harshly in our ears.

I followed the gamekeeper. An unknown power, which I could not explain to myself, gave me wings. We traversed, always running, thickets, marshes, meadows. Arrived at an orchard, we arrested our course to take breath.

"You are nothing but an ass!" said I, by way of conclusion.

"Much better be an ass than be damned."

"Fly before a pretty woman!"

"Ah, yeas! She was pretty," returned the gamekeeper; "but she does not belong to earth. It is the letawitza, the shooting star which has assumed a human form. You did not, then, observe her hair? Wouldn't you have called it a trail of stars floating on the surface of the water?"

"I am going back down there! I must see that woman."

"Are you, then, possessed by a devil?" said the gamekeeper, petrified; "if you laid before me a hundred ducats, if you