Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

irit

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ting and s

rivulet, and

dark shades, for

with him; a

ll tha

Y'S Al

st lights that had been there for many a year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate to be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose

d hard with the point of an old tool that was lying near, till at length it yielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up suddenly, disclosed a chamber-empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves, whose long-lived scent had long since departed; and, in another, a small packet of papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose colour had gone with the rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair, and regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged from its depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she

w such a little creat

d indeed I hardly

is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itsel

er with the foolish speech, of which

ttle creature as you gr

suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises abov

lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but un

he, "you will

towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I suppose I

I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve;

not my grandm

a good deal further back than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers on

e w

Is there a fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh

hing quite different from

ou shall find the way into Fairy La

rest, till I found myself at the window, whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and where I stood gazing on a whole heaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea, still as death and hoary in the moon, swee

y Land,

closed the secretary, and we

was soon to find the truth of the lady's promise, th