THE RACE OF ORVEN

Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince Zaleski—­victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men!  Having renounced the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom, more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.

But during the time that what was called the ‘Pharanx labyrinth’ was exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent mistrust of the denoument of that dark plot, drew me to his place of hermitage.

I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set.  It was a vast palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which the sunlight hardly pierced.  Up this I passed, and seeking out the deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter) finally put up my caleche in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock behind the domain.

As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days.  I regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how much genius, culture, brilliancy, power!  The hall was constructed in the manner of a Roman atrium, and from the oblong pool of turgid water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly squealing at my approach.  I mounted by broken marble steps to the corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way through a mazeland of apartments—­suite upon suite—­along many a length of passage, up and down many stairs.  Dust-clouds rose from the uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering ricochets to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling.  Nowhere was there a vestige of furniture—­nowhere a trace of human life.

After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose lights around.  At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python’s skin.  One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince’s only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer.  Nodding to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski’s apartment.