Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/79

 about the cell he occupied, all painted with extreme finish and photographic minuteness. One especially noticeable was of Richard III., after having slain his two nephews. He was depicted as holding up his sword high aloft, and catching in his mouth the blood drops as they fell. Then, in parenthesis, Sala told us how Dadd, having killed his father, escaped from the scene of his crime and took his guilty flight to Dover, and from thence crossed the Channel with the intention of going to Paris. On his way thither, he still found himself in doubt as to whether, after all, he had accomplished his mission or not. In the compartment of the railway carriage that he had taken a place in, was a fellow-traveller. They entered into a conversation which lasted well-nigh the whole journey. Dadd, still in doubt, began to fancy his companion was the devil incarnate, whom it was his mission to kill. Through the window of the carriage he gazed at the heavens and looked for a sign from it. The sun was setting and the sky full of threatening rain-clouds. It seemed borne in upon him that if the sun sank in serene and unclouded splendour, his fellow-traveller's life must be spared, but if otherwise, he saw his duty and was resolved to do it. The sun sunk below the horizon cloudlessly, and his companion little knew of the fate he had escaped.

These various relations were interrupted by the arrival of the two young women whom Bergheim had arranged should be his mediums for the evening.