“‘You say,’ added he in a trembling voice, ‘that the phantom kissed the two children’s foreheads?’ I answered him, that it was even so. He then exclaimed, in accents of the deepest despair, ‘Oh heavens! they must then both die!’”—
Till now the company had listened without the slightest noise or interruption to Ferdinand: but as he pronounced the last words, the greater part of his audience trembled; and the young lady who had previously occupied the chair on which he sat, uttered a piercing shriek.
“Imagine,” continued Ferdinand, “how astonished my friend must have been at this unexpected exclamation. The vision of the night had caused him excess of agitation; but the melancholy voice of the count pierced his heart, and seemed to annihilate his being, by the terrifying conviction of the existence of the spiritual world, and the secret horrors with which this idea was accompanied. It was not then a dream, a chimera, the fruit of an over-heated imagination! but a mysterious and infallible messenger, which, dispatched from the world of spirits, had passed close to him, had placed itself by his couch, and by its fatal kiss had dropt the germ of death in the bosom of the two children.
“He vainly entreated the count to explain this extraordinary event. Equally fruitless were his son’s
