This man kept his genius so long stagnant
that it decayed on his hands, and then into his pestilential music he
poured his poison, and would have made the world sick. Oh, for delivery
from the crushing transgressions of another! His name? Ah, but that is
my secret! I ate his sin, and truth, my son, is stranger than theology!
Listen!"
Before his daughter could check him he had hastily donned his armament
of instruments and, tramping slowly the broad, smooth path, began
playing. Ferval, much disappointed, was about to disappear, for he
remembered the racking noises of the previous day. But this music, this
Tune of Time!...
III
It was like the flare of lightning which illuminates strange regions
beyond the borders of the soul. Ferval no longer heard, he felt; he felt
no more, he saw. The white veil was torn asunder, and it showed him a
melodious thunder-pool wherein tapering tiny bodies swam, whose eyes
were the eyes of Debora. They split and coalesced into other creatures,
and to the drummings of spheric harmonies resolved themselves scaly and
monstrous.
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