Visions—A Phantasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

I obeyed and the first impression was so exquisite that I gave a sigh of relief. A soft silvery radiance—or was it mist? surrounded me completely. At first I could distinguish nothing, the blue light blinded me, but soon the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests began to stand out; a sheet of water lay widespread under us with the stars glittering, reflected in its depths, and with ripples that caressed, murmuring, the shore. The perfume of orange blossoms stole up to me, and like the wave beats and at first blended with them, the fresh, pure tones of a woman's voice pulsed the air. The odor, the sound drew me downward; I let myself sink to a stately marble chateau that gleamed white in a grove of cypresses. The singer's voice streamed out of the wide-set windows, the water washed softly under the very walls of the building, and just opposite, completely mantled with orange and laurel shrubs, flooded with moonlight and tricked with many a fair statue and slender column, a round high island rose from the water's lap.

"Isola Bella," Ellis told me. "Lago Maggiore."

An "ah!" was my only answer; I sank lower and lower down. Louder and clearer the woman's voice sounded from the chateau; it compelled me irresistibly, I must see the face of the singer who filled with such strains such a night. We stopped before one of the windows.

In the middle of a room decorated in the Pompeiian manner and resembling an old temple more than a modern salon, filled with Greek statues, Etruscan vases, exotic flowers, rare and costly stuffs, a young girl sat at a piano full in the light of two lamps that burned softly overhead in their alabaster vases. With head slightly thrown back and eyes half closed, she sang an Italian aria; she sang and smiled, yet at the same time her features wore an expression of glowing earnestness, token of the intensest enjoyment. She smiled, and it seemed as if the lusty young Faun of Praxiteles smiled back to her out of his corner behind the oleanders through the thin smoke that curled up from a brazen censer on a tripod. The beauty was alone. Entranced by the song, by the light, by the splendor and fragrance, and stirred to the depth of my soul by the sight of this young, tranquil, perfect happiness, I had entirely forgotten my companion and the extraordinary wise in which I had become the witness of a life so foreign and so far from my own, and I made a movement to step within the window and to speak.

Instantly my whole frame thrilled with a heavy electric shock. I turned, Ellis's face, spite of its transparency, was gloomy and menacing; in her suddenly wide-opened eyes gleamed wrathful fires.

"Come!" she said in an angry whisper, and again I felt tempest-speed, darkness, and the sensation of swooning. But this time it was not the cry of the legions but the voice of the songstress broken off at a high note that lingered in my ears.

We paused. The same high note rang steadily, continued, though I was conscious of another air and quite a different odor. A fresh, invigorating breeze, like one blowing over a large body of water, and the smell of hay, smoke, and hemp, met me. A second long-sustained note followed the first, then a third, and with an expression so simple, a modulation so familiar and homely, that I said to myself on the spot, "That is one of Russia's sons who sings a Russian ballad." In the same instant everything about me grew clear.