The Third Macabre Megapack Read Free Page B

dark that you startled me.’
    “From a faint tinge in the old man’s cheek and a certain pleasant softening of the poor solitary eye in front of me I secretly congratulated myself upon this last remark.
    “‘We never see a friend,’ said the old man, apologetically, ‘and the temptation to have company was too much for us. Besides, I don’t know what else you could have done.’
    “‘Nothing else half so good, I’m sure,’ said I.
    “‘Come,’ said my host, with almost a sprightly air. ‘Now we know each other, draw our chairs to the fire and let’s keep this birthday in a proper fashion.’
    “He drew a small table to the fire for the glasses and produced a box of cigars, and placing a chair for the old servant, sternly bade her to sit down and drink. If the talk was not sparkling, it did not lack for vivacity, and we were soon as merry a party as I have ever seen. The night wore on so rapidly that we could hardly believe our ears when in a lull in the conversation a clock in the hall struck twelve.
    “‘A last toast before we retire,’ said my host, pitching the end of his cigar into the fire and turning to the small table.
    “We had drunk several before this, but there was something impressive in the old man’s manner as he rose and took up his glass. His tall figure seemed to get taller, and his voice rang as he gazed proudly at his disfigured son.
    “‘The health of the children my boy saved!’ he said, and drained his glass at a draught.”

VERA, by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam
    Translated from the French by Hamish Miles
    The form of the body is more essential to him than its substance.
    — La Physiologie Moderne
    Love, said Solomon, is stronger than Death. And truly, its mysterious power knows no bounds.
    Not many years since, an autumn evening was falling over Paris. Towards the gloomy Faubourg Saint-Germain carriages were driving, with lamps already lit, returning belatedly from the afternoon drive in the Bois. Before the gateway of a vast seigniorial mansion, set about with immemorial gardens, one of them drew up. The arch was surmounted by a stone escutcheon with the arms of the ancient family of the Counts d’Athol, to wit: on a field azure, a mullet argent, with the motto Pallida Victrix under the coronet with its upturned ermine of the princely cap. The heavy folding doors swung apart, and there descended a man between thirty and thirty-five, in mourning clothes, his face of deathly pallor. On the steps silent attendants raised aloft their torches, but with no eye for them he mounted the flight and went within. It was the Count d’Athol.
    With unsteady tread he ascended the white staircases leading to the room where, that very morning, he had laid within a coffin, velvet-lined and covered with violets, amid billowing cambric, the lady of his delight, his bride of the gathering paleness, Vera, his despair.
    At the top the quiet door swung across the carpet. He lifted the hangings.
    All the objects in the room were just where the Countess had left them the evening before. Death, in his suddenness, had hurled the bolt. Last night his loved one had swooned in such penetrating joys, had surrendered in embraces so perfect, that her heart, weary with ecstasy, had given way. Suddenly her lips had been covered with a flood of mortal scarlet, and she had barely had time to give her husband one kiss of farewell, smiling, with not one word; and then her long lashes, like veils of mourning, had fallen over the lovely light of her eyes.
    This day without a name had passed.
    Towards noon the Count d’Athol, after the dread ceremonies of the family vault, had dismissed the bleak escort at the cemetery. Shutting himself up within the four marble walls, alone with her whom he had buried, he had closed behind him the iron door of the mausoleum. Incense was burning on a tripod before the coffin, bestarred by a shining crown of lamps over the pillow of this young woman, who was now no more.
    Standing there