VI.
THE SPILLING OF THE CUP.
I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
microscope. I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature
that contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp,
surrounded by its moderator's, burning, when I went to bed the night
before. I found the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of
pleasure animating her features, in the brilliant light which
surrounded her. She tossed her lustrous golden hair over her
shoulders with innocent coquetry. She lay at full length in the
transparent medium, in which she supported herself with ease, and
gambolled with the enchanting grace that the Nymph Salmacis might
have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus.
I tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection
were developed. I lessened the lamp-light considerably. By the dim
light that remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across
her face. She looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I
flooded the stage of the microscope again with a full stream of light,
and her whole expression changed. She sprang forward like some
substance deprived of all weight. Her eyes sparkled, and her lips
moved. Ah! if science had only the means of conducting and
reduplicating sounds, as it does the rays of light, what carols of
happiness would then have entranced my ears! What jubilant hymns to
Adonais would have thrilled the illumined air!
I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his
mystic world with sylphs,--beautiful beings whose breath of life was
lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
purest light.
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