antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host
was called away to attend some visitors of importance, and I found myself
on the sward before the house, right in view of the mausoleum and alone
with Margrave.

I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpse
of the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strong desire
to speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that tortured me.
But--setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I had given, or
dreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow--to fulfil that desire would
have been impossible,--impossible to any one gazing on that radiant
youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then: a white doe, that
even my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovingly to his
side, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there like the
incarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have before applied
to him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible, I
repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Art thou the master of
demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?" As if from
redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rather cooing, a
strain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike the music one
hears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand over my
forehead in bewilderment and awe.

"Are there," I said unconsciously,--"are there, indeed, such prodigies in
Nature?"

"Nature!" he cried, catching up the word; "talk to me of Nature! Talk of
her, the wondrous blissful mother! Mother I may well call her. I am her
spoiled child, her darling! But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to lose
sight of Nature!--to rot senseless, whether under these turfs or within