Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/162

THE TECHNIQUE OF FORM verbal colour and up to a certain point not without interest. It was plain that the writer had saturated himself with the imaginative stores of the French school such as Prosper Mérimée's Vénus D'Ille and Gautier's Pied de Momie. He had caught the trick of telling a story which apparently was due to supernatural causes, yet could, if the reader preferred, be explained on simple and rational grounds. The story was somewhat after this sort: there was a fantastic piece of jewelry from which a single gem was missing; the jewelry was undoubtedly of great antiquity and it possessed mysterious properties calculated to inspire both curiosity and awe. The missing gem is recovered under curious circumstances, and no sooner is it replaced than the professor forthwith goes into a trance and witnesses very vividly a painful tragedy re-enacted from the vanished centuries. [148]