hand gently pressing my wrist. In the same instant a strange
intoxicating numbness passed over me, like the continuance or climax of
the sensation I was still feeling from the gaze of Lucrezia Borgia. The
gardens, the summer sky, the consciousness of Bertha's arm being within
mine, all vanished, and I seemed to be suddenly in darkness, out of which
there gradually broke a dim firelight, and I felt myself sitting in my
father's leather chair in the library at home. I knew the fireplace--the
dogs for the wood-fire--the black marble chimney-piece with the white
marble medallion of the dying Cleopatra in the centre. Intense and
hopeless misery was pressing on my soul; the light became stronger, for
Bertha was entering with a candle in her hand--Bertha, my wife--with
cruel eyes, with green jewels and green leaves on her white ball-dress;
every hateful thought within her present to me . . . "Madman, idiot! why
don't you kill yourself, then?" It was a moment of hell. I saw into her
pitiless soul--saw its barren worldliness, its scorching hate--and felt
it clothe me round like an air I was obliged to breathe. She came with
her candle and stood over me with a bitter smile of contempt; I saw the
great emerald brooch on her bosom, a studded serpent with diamond eyes. I
shuddered--I despised this woman with the barren soul and mean thoughts;
but I felt helpless before her, as if she clutched my bleeding heart, and
would clutch it till the last drop of life-blood ebbed away. She was my
wife, and we hated each other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library,
the candle-light disappeared--seemed to melt away into a background of
light, the green serpent with the diamond eyes remaining a dark image on
the retina. Then I had a sense of my eyelids quivering, and the living
daylight broke in upon me; I saw gardens, and heard voices; I was seated
on the steps of the Belvedere Terrace, and my friends were round me.

The tumult of mind into which I was thrown by this hideous vision made me
ill for several days, and prolonged our stay at Vienna. I shuddered with