wished I had a guitar to which I could sing to the unknown: "O fire,
the poor moth that made a vain effort to fly away has come back to thee!
Forgive it but this once, burn its wings and consume it in thy flame!"

Suddenly two tear-drops fell from overhead on my brow. Dark masses of
clouds overcast the top of the Avalli hills that day. The gloomy woods
and the sooty waters of the Susta were waiting in terrible suspense and
in an ominous calm. Suddenly land, water, and sky shivered, and a wild
tempest-blast rushed howling through the distant pathless woods, showing
its lightning-teeth like a raving maniac who had broken his chains. The
desolate halls of the palace banged their doors, and moaned in the
bitterness of anguish.

The servants were all in the office, and there was no one to light the
lamps. The night was cloudy and moonless. In the dense gloom within I
could distinctly feel that a woman was lying on her face on the carpet
below the bed--clasping and tearing her long dishevelled hair with
desperate fingers. Blood was tricking down her fair brow, and she was
now laughing a hard, harsh, mirthless laugh, now bursting into violent
wringing sobs, now rending her bodice and striking at her bare bosom, as
the wind roared in through the open window, and the rain poured in
torrents and soaked her through and through.

All night there was no cessation of the storm or of the passionate cry.
I wandered from room to room in the dark, with unavailing sorrow. Whom
could I console when no one was by? Whose was this intense agony of
sorrow? Whence arose this inconsolable grief?

And the mad man cried out: "Stand back! Stand back!! All is false!
All is false!!"