On the following morning Flemming awoke in a chamber of the Golden Ship
at Salzburg, just as the clock in the Dome-church opposite was striking
ten. The window-shutters were closed, and the room nearly dark. He was
lying on his back, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and his eyes
looking up at the white curtains overhead. He thought them the white
marble canopy of a tomb, and himself the marble statue, lying beneath.
When the clock ceased striking, the eight and twenty gigantic bronze
statues from the Church of Holy Rood in Innsbruck stalked into the
chamber, and arranged themselves along the walls, which spread into
dimly-lighted aisles and arches. On the painted windows he saw
Interlachen, withits Franciscan cloister, and the Square Tower of the
ruins. In a pendent, overhead, stood the German student, as Saint
Vitus; and on a lavatory, or basin of holy-water, below, sat a cherub,
with the form and features of Berkley. Then the organ-pipes began to
blow, and he heard the voices of an invisible choir chanting. And anon
the gilded gates in the bronze screen before the chancel opened, and a
bridal procession passed through. The bride was clothed in the garb of
the Middle Ages; and held a book in her hand, with velvet covers, and
golden clasps. It was Mary Ashburton. She looked at him as she passed.
Her face was pale; and there were tears in her sweet eyes. Then the
gates closed again; and one of the oaken poppy-heads over a carved
stall, in the shape of an owl, flapped its broad wings, and hooted,
"Towhit! to-whoo!" Then the whole scene changed; and he thought himself
a monk's-head on a gutterspout; and it rained dismally; and Berkley was
standing under with an umbrella, laughing!
In other words, Flemming was in a ragingfever, and delirious. He
remained in this state for a week. The first thing he was conscious of
was hearing the doctor say to Berkley;
"The crisis is passed. I now consider him out of danger."
He then fell into a sweet sleep; the wild fever had swept away like an
angry, red cloud, and the refreshing summer rain began to fall like dew
upon the parched earth. Still another week; and Flemming was, "sitting
clothed, and in his right mind." Berkley had been reading to him; and
still held the book in his hand, with his fore-finger between the
leaves. It was a volume of Hoffmann's writings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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