This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream
of sounds in the trance state--I can hardly call it _speech_, so
murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy
breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an
intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk,
considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the
habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her,
trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which
came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips.
Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words;
"the veil was rent" for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the
course of her musing and wandering spirit.
At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which
were familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the
Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and
the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe
them with precision.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25