‘In the course of your life,’ he said, ‘you have, no doubt, seen many strange things.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the grotesques. ‘Did you ever, if I may ask the question, see a house furnished in this way before?’

‘Never.’

‘Could it have been so furnished by any reasonable man?’

‘A poet?’ I said tentatively.

The Count shrugged his shoulders.

‘There are no poets in the family.’

I kept silence.

‘The man shot himself. His son built the little room up above. It has no window to the front. There his wife lived until her death.’

He glanced up at a portrait on the wall, the features of which strongly resembled his own.

‘No one knows what became of him.’

As he spoke, he pulled a silk tassel which hung by a long slender cord from the ceiling. A thousand lights flashed out. The heart of every carven rose became a heart of flame, stars glowed among the vine and pomegranate, eyes of fire shone from the grotesque heads. The lights, the faces, the flowers and fruit all round wreathed themselves into the first letter of the name of my enemy. Everywhere it was written. A wave of fresh, vigorous hate surged over me.

‘Have you ever seen an apartment lighted in this manner before?’ he asked.

‘I must confess that it appears to me fantastic, though very beautiful.’

‘We were not speaking of the effect, I think. It is unusual?’

‘Certainly.’

‘The invention is due to the father of the present owner. He fell by his own hand.’

‘And the present owner?’ I said.

The Count’s expression changed. He looked at his daughter, who had seated herself on a low couch by the fire. She did not appear to be listening; but he lowered his voice.

‘The present owner has one child—now in the flower of her youth. She does not know the dreadful fate of her ancestors. She has only been told thus much—that at the age of seventeen she will pass into another life. She feels no fear, since she is going to the mother whom, as a babe, she lost. Of the exact moment and manner of her death she has been kept in ignorance until within an hour of it. Nothing has frightened, nothing has distressed her. Pure and unspotted as she came to him, he that best loves her desires to send her back to that heaven which is more real to her than earth, to that heaven which will save her from knowing—as, but for him, she must infallibly know—that this earth is a hell. Is he right?’

‘No,’ I said, with a certain assurance. ‘He is mad.’ The Count started; but on the instant he was calm again.