Laura Read Free Page B

the glass cases from the outside, I gazed mechanically towards the mineralogical collection which Laura had examined a moment before, and which had been disdained in unison by my uncle, by Walter and by myself. I had moved to stand there without quite knowing why, for my uncle and Walter had turned towards the rocks, that is the purely geological collection. Perhaps, without my realising it, I was dominated by the vague pleasure of breathing in the scent of a white rose that Laura had placed and forgotten on the edge of the glass case.
    Whatever the reason, my eyes were fixed on the series of quartz hyalines, also called rock crystals, before which Laura had appeared to halt for a moment with a certain pleasure, and, whilst listening to my uncle’s reasoning, and wishing to forget Laura, who had disappeared, I contemplated a magnificent geode of amethyst quartz, completely filled with crystals which were truly remarkable , transparent and had the freshness of prisms.
    However, my thoughts were not as fixed as my gaze; they floated at random, and the scent of the little musk rose brought my being back under the control of instinct. I loved that rose, and yet I believed I hated the one who had plucked it. I breathed in its scent with aspirations that translated themselves into kisses, I pressed it to my lips with a disdain that translated itself into bites. Suddenly I felt a light hand upon my shoulder, and a delicious voice, the voice of Laura, spoke in my ear.
    Do not turn round, do not look at me, she said; leave that poor rose alone, and come with me to gather the flowers of stone that do not wither. Come, follow me. Do not listen to my uncle’s cold reasoning and Walter’s blasphemies . Quickly, quickly, friend, let us leave for the fairy regions of the crystal. I am running towards them, follow me, if you love me!
    I felt so surprised and troubled, that I had the strength neither to look at Laura, nor to answer her. Moreover, she was already no longer at my side; she was in front of me, as if she had passed through the glass case, or the case had become an open door. She was fleeing or rather flying in a luminous space, and I followed her, not knowing where I was, nor by what fantastical brightness I was dazzled.
    Fatigue halted me and overcame me after a period of time whose length I could not calculate. Discouraged, I let myself fall. My cousin had disappeared.
    Laura! dear Laura! I cried out in despair, where have you led me, and why have you abandoned me?
    I then sensed Laura’s hand upon my shoulder once more, and her voice speaking in my ear again. At the same time, far away Uncle Tungstenius’s piercing voice was saying:
    No, there is no hypo … po … pothesis in all of that!
    However Laura was speaking to me as well, and I could not understand her. I thought at first that it was in Italian, then in Greek, and finally I recognised that it was in a completely new language, which little by little was revealing itself to me like the memory of another life. I grasped the meaning of the last sentence very clearly.
    So, see where I have brought you, she was saying, and understand that I have opened your eyes to the sky’s light.
    I then began to see and understand in what surprising place I found myself. I was with Laura in the centre of the amethyst geode which graced the glass case in the mineralogical gallery; but what up to then I had taken blindly and on the faith of others for a block of hollow flint, the size of a melon cut in half and lined inside with prismatic crystals of irregular size and groupings, was in reality a ring of tall mountains enclosing an immense basin filled with steep hills bristling with needles of violet quartz, the smallest of which might have exceeded the dome of St Peter’s in Rome both in volume and in height.
    From that moment on I was no longer astonished by the tiredness I had experienced while running up one ofthese rocky needles, and I felt a great surge of fear as I saw that