Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/88

68 for I feel eagle's wings springing out at my shoulders, and with these wings I could make a tour of the world in four-and-twenty hours."

"Ah! ah! it is the hashish that is operating. Well, unfurl your wings, and fly into superhuman regions. Fear nothing, there is a watch over you; and if your wings, like those of Icarus, melt before the sun, we are here to receive you."

He then said some Arabian words to Ali, who made a sign of obedi ence and withdrew, but not to any distance.

As to Franz, a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the pre-occupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared, as they would at that first feeling of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an immaterial lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not that gloomy horizon over which a vague alarm prevails, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors,—songs so clear and sounding that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down,—he saw the isle of Monte-Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis lost in the desert; then, as the bark approached, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven from this island, as if some fay-like Loreley, or some enchanter like Amphion, had decreed to attract thither a soul or build there a city.

At length the bark touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inspiring the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a-dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sindbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished; and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure.

They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and "bright and flowing hair." They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courte-