Laura by George Sand Read Free Book Online Page B

was so motionless and starkly white in the half-light of morning that, if I had seen him like that forthe first time, he would have terrified me like a ghost. I approached him and touched him. He was singularly cold, but he was breathing very regularly and in such a peaceful manner, that his disturbing face was entirely changed. Like this, he seemed like the calmest of dead men and his strange ugliness had given way to a strange beauty.
    I was preparing to leave soundlessly in order to go and attend to my duties, when he awoke of his own accord and looked at me without hostility or disdain.
    You are surprised, he said, to see me in your bedroom; but you should know that, for more than ten years, I have not lain in a bed. That way of sleeping would be unbearable to me. It is as much as I can do if, from time to time, on my days of laziness, I sleep in a silk hammock. Moreover, accustomed as I am to a female companion, I do not like sleeping alone. Yesterday evening I found the door to your room standing ajar, and, instead of going to suffocate in the eiderdown Laura had had prepared for me at the height of summer, I came in with you, and took possession of this leather armchair which suits me very well. You snore a little loudly, but I imagined I was sleeping amid the roaring of lions roaming around my encampment, and you reminded me of nights of rather agreeable emotions.
    I am happy, Uncle, I replied, that my armchair and my snoring agree with you, and please make use of them as often as you like.
    I want to pay you back for your politeness, he went on; now come into my room, I have to speak with you.
    When we were ensconced in the apartment whichUncle Tungstenius had had made ready and which was the finest in the establishment, he showed me his luggage, whose smallness surprised me. It consisted entirely of a change of robe and hat, with a little case of underclothing made from yellow cloth, and an even smaller bronze box.
    This, he said, is the way to travel freely from one end of our planet to the other, and, when you have adopted my habits, you will see that they are excellent. You must begin by becoming thin and losing the garish roses of your Germanic complexion, and for that, there is no better regime than eating little, sleeping fully dressed on the first chair you find, and never halting for more than three days under the same roof; but, before I take charge of your fate, which is no mean favour to do you, I want a few sincere explanations, and you are going to answer me as if you were standing before …
    Before whom, my dear uncle?
    Before the devil, ready to break your bones if you should lie, he replied, and his wicked smile and infernal gaze returned.
    I am not in the habit of lying, I told him; I am an honest man, and I do not swear oaths.
    Very well; then answer! What is the meaning of this story of a broken glass case, hallucinations, a journey into the crystal? During your illness two years ago, my brother-in -law wrote me something rather muddled about it and I made Laura tell me about it yesterday evening. Is it true that you wanted to enter by thought into a geode lined with amethyst crystals, that you believed you really had entered it, and that you saw there the face of my daughter?
    All that is unfortunately true, I replied. I had an extraordinary vision, I broke a glass case, I injured my head, I had a fever, I recounted my dream with the conviction with which it had left me, and for some time people thought me mad. However, my uncle, I am not; I am cured, I am in good health, I work to my teachers’ satisfaction, my behaviour is not at all extravagant, and nothing would have made me unworthy of being Laura’s husband, if you had not given authorisation for her to be engaged to another who has little interest in her hand, whereas I …
    This is not about Laura, said Uncle Nasias with a gesture of impatience; it is about what you saw in the crystal. I want to know what it was.
    You want to humiliate