第42章 Apollo's Lyre (6)

"Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes....Raoul, you have seen death's heads, when they have been dried and withered by the centuries, and, perhaps, if you were not the victim of a nightmare, you saw HIS death's head at Perros.

And then you saw Red Death stalking about at the last masked ball.

But all those death's heads were motionless and their dumb horror was not alive.But imagine, if you can, Red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon;AND NOT A RAY OF LIGHT FROM THE SOCKETS, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in the dark.

"I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth, and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me.Leaning over me, he cried, `Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness!

Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like!

Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied?

I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me for ever.I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, `Look at me! I AM DONJUAN TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair.""Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul."I will kill him.In Heaven's name, Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is!

I must kill him!"

"Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!""Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know!...

But, in any case, I will kill him!"

"Oh, Raoul, listen, listen!...He dragged me by my hair and then...and then...Oh, it is too horrible!""Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul fiercely.

"Out with it, quick!"

"Then he hissed at me.`Ah, I frighten you, do I?...I dare say!...Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this...this...my head is a mask? Well,' he roared, `tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along! I insist!

Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!' And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face.He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails!...`Know,'

he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, `know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back...but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good.

...So I shall keep you here!...Why did you want to see me?

Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!...When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!'

"He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs.And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections.