Still the sick man raved; but he talked to himself at longer intervals, and with longer pauses between his words;---his voice was growing more feeble, his speech more incoherent. His thought vacillated and distorted, like flame in a wind.
Weirdly the past became confounded with the present; impressions of sight and of sound interlinked in fastastic affinity,---the face of Chita Viosca, the murmur of the rising storm. Then flickers of spectral lightning passed through his eyes, through his brain, with every throb of the burning arteries; then utter darkness came,---a darkness that surged and moaned, as the circumfluence of a shadowed sea. And through and over the moaning pealed one multitudinous human cry, one hideous interblending of shoutings and shriekings ... A woman's hand was locked in his own ... "Tighter," he muttered, "tighter still, darling! hold as long as you can!" It was the tenth night of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six ...
---"Cheri!"
Again the mysterious whisper startled him to consciousness,---the dim knowledge of a room filled with ruby colored light,---and the sharp odor of vinegar. The house swung round slowly;---the crimson flame of the lamp lengthened and broadened by turns;---then everything turned dizzily fast,---whirled as if spinning in a vortex ... Nausea unutterable; and a frightful anguish as of teeth devouring him within,---tearing more and more furiously at his breast. Then one atrocious wrenching, rending, burning,---and the gush of blood burst from lips and nostrils in a smothering deluge. Again the vision of lightnings, the swaying, and the darkness of long ago. "Quick!---quick!---hold fast to the table, Adele!---never let go!" ...
Up,---up,---up!---what! higher yet? Up to the red sky!
Red---black-red ... heated iron when its vermilion dies. So, too, the frightful flood! And noiseless. Noiseless because heavy, clammy,---thick, warm, sickening---blood? Well might the land quake for the weight of such a tide!---Why did Adele speak Spanish? Who prayed for him? ...
---"Alma de Cristo santisima santificame!
"Sangre de Cristo, embriagame!
"O buen Jesus, oye me!" ...
Out of the darkness into--such a light! An azure haze!
Ah!---the delicious frost! ... All the streets were filled with the sweet blue mist ... Voiceless the City and white;---crooked and weed grown its narrow ways! ... Old streets of tombs, these ... Eh! How odd a custom!---a Night-bell at every door. Yes, of course!---a night-bell!---the Dead are Physicians of Souls: they may be summoned only by night,---called up from the darkness and silence ... Yet she?---might he not dare to ring for her even by day? ........ Strange he had deemed it day!---why, it was black, starless ... And it was growing queerly cold ...... How should he ever find her now? It was so black ... so cold! ...
---"Cheri!"
All the dwelling quivered with the mighty whisper.
Outside, the great oaks were trembling to their roots;---all the shore shook and blanched before the calling of the sea.
And Carmen, kneeling at the feet of the dead, cried out, alone in the night:------"O Jesus misericordioso!---tened compasion de el!"
