CHAPTER IV

GABRIELLE'S SEANCE

It was only a few minutes later that, shaking off the dreary sluggishness of my grief, I started out of the house for a brisk walk. Down through the village, out into the broad highway towards Briois, where the Diligence from Paris then shot past me, with salutations shouted from its windows, and handkerchiefs waved from its Imperial and still on, along the fields growing verdant, while the warm tremulous air, with its procreative touch, unclasped the glutinous envelopes of the buds in the alders and poplars, and afar towards Bienne, and the ruined chateau, the massed background of the walled forests spanned the horizon with a palpitating purple haze, as of an arrested atmosphere or emanation, and in the very zenith above me a creamy rosiness, like an etherial colored lymph, dripped from cloudlet to cloudlet.

How wonderfully beautiful it all was; its tenderness, the auroral lights of the sky, and the definite joy of the returning life; it renewed my courage, rather it put to flight the dull meanness of sottish fears and regrets. The verses of ---- came to my mind, and aloud, on the straight road that was now darkening, as the day fled to the empyrean, and thence must fly over the great ocean to the wonderland of America, I repeated them:

_O renouveau! Soleil! Tout palpite, tout vibre Tout rayonne, et J'ai dit, ouvrant la main; "Sois libre," L'oiseau s'est évadé dans les rameaux flottants, Et dans l'immensité splendide du printemps; Et J'ai vu s'en aller au loin la petite âme Dans cette clarté rose ou se mêle une flamme, Dans l'air profond, parmi les arbres infinis, Volant au vague appel des amours et des nids, Planant éperdument vers d'autres ailes blanches, Ne sachant quel palais choisir, courant aux branches, Aux fleurs, aux flots, aux bois, fraîchement reverdis, Avec l'effarement d'entrer au paradis.... Alors, dans la lumière et dans la transparence, Regardant cette fuite et cette deliverance, Et ce pauvre être, ainsi disparu dans le port, Pensif, je me suis dit: "Je viens d'être la morte."_

Then my thoughts reverted to the strange things Gabrielle had told me, to the mysterious experience she promised to lead me through, _that night_, and, as the stars stole one by one timorously out of the filmy shadows of the east, into the grey dark sky, I speculated on our relations with the unseen, and whether we might be so attuned, as Gabrielle seemed to be, to respond and feel that numerous company, and their thoughts, and wishes, their influences, and their designs? I knew, everyone knows, that the scale of sound runs beyond the coarse mechanism of our ears at either end of the gamut, as indeed there are rays of light which our eyes do not catch in the ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Could it be that actually we are immersed in a vast ocean of spiritualized animation, which we cannot apprehend--most of us--which touches us on every side, and is yet as unapproachable as the stars I was looking at, but, unlike the stars, is not even suspected.

But perhaps--so I mused--there were hierophants, translators of its mysteries, souls enriched with some finer sense, who felt it, saw it, or, like pulsating membranes that record the varying pressure of the air, were so marvellously made as to feel its pressure too. They were pendulums, swinging in two worlds, and passing from one to the other, as one might pass from darkness to light, from discord to harmony, from confusion to order, from the apparent and back again to the real. Of these was Gabrielle. Or they were doorways, windows, passages, that afforded access to us, the corporeal prisoners of the earth, through which they came back--_les revenants_--when they too dearly loved us to find even happiness in their new abode unless they might occasionally regain our company. Ah could it be so with Blanchette! And then the queer book of Du Maurier's (that was the name of the English artist who wrote it) came into my head, and the impossible fancy of the Martian woman living in the body or the brain of Barty Joselin, and the death of the girl Marty who had become the second home of the beautiful demon woman--the Martian sprite.

I half wondered whether Blanchette could come and tenant my own body, with me, or was she inhabiting Gabrielle? Ah--_la folie_--but should I indeed see her tonight? I hurried along the familiar road, now in a growing tempest and terror of mind, almost with, I cannot describe it, a queer sense of disembodiment, as if I, myself, were not in my flesh and blood, but some ghost of myself, with an engagement to meet the ghost I had loved--and yet loved. Thus I hastened backward in the night, and entered my home, where the lights burned most cheerfully, and found my parents and sister waiting for me, and Hortense--still with us, with her flagging energies helped out by a pretty brunette waitress Gabrielle had brought from Paris--impatient, at the table, for our evening repast.

"Alfred, we have been waiting for you. Tonight your mother and myself must go to Briois. There is to be a meeting there of the Protestant Union, and I am expected to say something on the needs of our country-side for religious instruction. I hope to be able to bring about the building of a little church where our people may have the consolations of their religion;" it was my father speaking.

"Ah pardon, I _am_ late, but the night is heavenly, and the spring comes on divinely. I have been just now towards Briois, and I could have walked, I think, on to La Ferté without fatigue. My legs do improve in these pleasant days, and the warmth stirs my blood. I am glad, father, you will have a church. Are you sure it is best to build it in St. Choiseul?" I answered.

"Why not, Alfred?" asked mother.

"Well there are not so many here who would need it and _pas d'abeilles pas de miel;_" I said laughing.

"But, Alfred, we are to have a new visitor to live with us in St. Choiseul, a rich man from Bordeaux, who is a leader of our congregations there. He is too what the English call, an exhorter, _un homme qui exhorte_; very eloquent, a great preacher in his way. If the church is built in our village he will help us, and then it might be that he will be willing to be our pastor too. He is a relative of _le Capitaine_, and now he has suffered a great sorrow. His daughter--the apple of his eye--died on the same day that Blanchette left us, _nous laissait_. The captain begged him to come to St. Choiseul, and he consented. It will be good for the captain, good for St. Choiseul--good for all of us. Is it not so?"

"Yes, mother," said Gabrielle, and she leaned towards her with her gentle smile of reassurance--there had been growing between sister and myself, and our parents, since Blanchette's death, a severer feeling of religious estrangement--"It _will_ be good. I have heard Père Grandin. I heard him in the wards of the hospital, and he is a good man, _parlant le plus beau? français avec une voix délicieuse_."

Mother and father were delighted; it was a great surprise, and during our evening meal we talked of nothing else than the coming of Père Grandin. They asked Gabrielle about him with an increasing pleasure, as they saw how really admiring sister was of the excellent man's skill and sweetness. It was a pleasant time, and in the domestic glow of confidence, that the Père Grandin would become an instrument of propitiation, rather than of discord, while Julie placed before us one of Hortense's masterpieces--_chefs d'oeuvres_--_le ragout de mouton_, with garnishments of peppers and haricots, with her hot cakes--_pains de seigle_--and the melting _chou-fleur_ and the inspiriting Burgundy, we bloomed, so to say, into a renewed affection. It was admirable. I recall it--shall I ever forget that wondrous night?--almost as if it had been a moment ago. I was soothed and quieted, and the rising frenzy of my blood subsided, and a most ingratiating blissfulness invaded me, and we lingered long at the table. Gabrielle was so gay and reminiscent it seemed as if she loved the hospital, now she was well free of it, and, as I listened in astonishment, I slowly realized that Gabrielle was responding to some hidden elation, and that--Was it her ecstacy to show me her strange power? Ah, yes, there was, too, her gladness that mother and father were to be away that night, and so--_Voila, la diablerie sans bornes!_ Bah, I will confess I was displeased, and felt a little disgusted amazement at Gabrielle.

An hour later our parents were tucked in the cabriolet, the short snapping strokes of the horse's hoofs passed away into silence, and Gabrielle and I were alone. We faced each other as the door closed, and Gabrielle seized my arm, and speaking very slowly, with her face covered by her other hand, with all her late show of spirits vanished, said:

"Alfred, I feel the power; it thrills me. I cannot explain, but as the time comes on, I am crowded with a multitude--_un essaim_--of motions within me, as if I might be slowly dissolved into air, or something else light and floating. You thought that I was careless at dinner. I know, I watched your eyes. You thought I was glad that father and mother were going away, so that I could show you my power when I call Blanchette (I shuddered) back to meet you. But that was not true. I felt disengaged and well, most well, and my heart was contented. There was no deception, no guiltiness as of escaping detection. None, I was myself, that was all. And Alfred I shall _tell_ father and mother. Why not?" at my gesture of discouragement.

"Gabrielle, promise me you will reveal nothing about this to anyone, until I have consented. Remember--_the Hospital_. Father and mother will be appalled. They cannot understand as I do your mysticism--and then, who knows what the power leads to? Be silent."

My sister lifted her face, and stared almost stealthily into my eyes. I, the _soi-disant_ critic of her "delusions"--that was my word, was now masking her concealment, and urging her to continued secrecy, intending--what did she think?--to use her potency for the gratification of my mad cravings?--to make her the servile means of communication with Blanchette, more and more, that thus my awakened desires might be stilled with the apparitional image of possession?

I did not answer the mute question. I could not. An unopposed, a sudden quenchless need of Blanchette, frustrated all honesty of speech, and I really caught at, snatched, the proffered chance--_diablerie_ or no _diablerie_--to see again the face, the form, the flesh--Was it indeed materialization as the mediumistic parlance had it?--of Blanchette. The more I thought of it, the more I coveted the vision. Its quality should be tested. That I swore. And my connivance became more cautious. We would try nothing, until Hortense and Julie had retired. A sudden tension of almost ravenous expectancy rose within me, utterly surprising, and _now_, I was the exhilarator, and prompter, and accomplice, more desirous, more credulous, than Gabrielle herself. The delay for _the thing_ to begin seemed insufferable, but there must be no interruption, and the sceptic, the half believer, the moderating protestant, at the unreasonableness and danger of the indulgence, moved now in its preparation with an unresisting acceptance of its realization, hungry for its fulfillment, every scruple banished!

"Gabrielle, go to your room. We will not begin until Hortense and Julie have gone to bed; then, when the house is all ours," my voice was strained and unnatural, and perhaps my features were themselves distorted with excitement, for Gabrielle slightly withdrew from me, "then, let us go to the library, and there we will unite our minds and hearts, and--_bring Blanchette back_!"

Only a violent self-control withheld my tongue from shouting the words, so monstrously grew within me the insatiable passion for the coveted design, a passion, half orgiastic, half a maddened curiosity, and within which, I know now, not a trace of spiritual feeling, or aspirations, or tenderness, or beauty, reigned, or had a part. So variously are we composed, and thus from the waters of our souls, when stirred, or clouded, darkened by the overturning prods of the rebellious body, which disturb its slimy sediments, rise the exhalations of unworthy motives. In that instant, as I waited afterwards for the hour agreed upon for our nocturnal incantations--the word suits the debased frame of my mind--just one overpowering conception ruled my heart, the possibility of clasping Blanchette to my breast as a physical presentment. Whither had flown the beautiful boundless dreams of our beatific, immaterial union, bathed in the everlasting lights of celestial choirs? Alas--whither?

It was about eleven o'clock, when Gabrielle tapped at the door between our rooms, and I opened it. Gabrielle had changed her dress somewhat. She had put on a dark serge gown that fitted quite closely, and she had opened the waist at the throat slightly, and discarded all collar. The sleeves closed about the wrists; in her hair, loosely piled up above her temples, were three silver combs, and they formed the only light touch in her apparel. We both wore slippers, as almost instinctively the association of lightness and noiselessness with the work in hand came to my mind. We said nothing, but passed out of my room, and stepped swiftly down the stairway to the library. I glanced out of the window hastily, and found the sky clear, mistily studded with the stars, and with strips of cloud strung along the western limits of the firmament.

Gabrielle asked me to light the lamp for a minute's instruction; otherwise we would proceed in complete darkness; that she averred was best. I lit the lamp, and was a little disturbed by Gabrielle's pallor which in the yellow light of the lamp appeared deathly. I asked her if she felt unwell. She smiled and said, "No, not at all," and then she motioned me to a seat near her, at the centre of the room, where she had chosen a chair, quite detached from any other article of furniture. Behind her were simply the unillumined corners of the apartment. I sat down and waited for her instructions, which however I fully understood as the manner of this seance had been in words rehearsed between us.

"Alfred, take my hands in your own, and bend your forehead forward upon my knees, and then just THINK of Blanchette, and remain so, no matter how long it seems. When the soul of Blanchette comes it will be light, but do not release my hands."

I recall the absolute precision of certainty in Gabrielle's words, in her voice, and then that she leaned back, shut her eyes, and just perceptibly drew her shoulders upward, while her lips moved as if in prayer. I put out the light. I pressed her hands in mine; they were supremely warm, and soft, and unresisting, and then I knelt and bowed my head and--endowed, as I have in this narrative many times intimated, some visualizing or occult force--brought to my eyes the very figure, color, expression, and voice of the dead girl. It was not so much a feeling of solemnity--that does not express it at all--as a feeling of mystery, of indefinite approach towards the incredible, with the mingled half delirious anticipations in myself of actually again seeing the live Blanchette, that held me rigid.

At length Gabrielle's fingers twitched slightly, and she half released them, but I held them tightly, and then Gabrielle seemed to be murmuring aloud. I still held my face downwards, forcing to my eyes the image of Blanchette, recalling her voice, and straining my mind outward as it were, in my effort to impress all of this upon Gabrielle. The voice of my sister grew slightly louder, and the words were at intervals coherent and intelligible, and then I lifted my head.

At first I could see nothing but soon I became conscious of some diffused light or glow, a kind of absorbed brightness, as if it escaped from the darkness itself, perhaps faintly bluish. It arrested my attention, and the thought of Blanchette died away as I actually saw the brightness increase around me. It was a strange indescribable light. It was not only seen by the eyes; it was felt by the mind, if I may put it that way. Looking more cautiously and intently it became evident that it lay in lines proceeding through the blackness of the room, from a point somewhere at our side, and it still grew slowly stronger, with a soft interior palpitation, as if the source of the emanations pulsed regularly, sending out the luminous streams in waves. With this increasing intensity--though intensity hardly expresses it, it was so vaguely dispersed and yet obviously confined in radial directions--with the increasing intensity, the mental influence deepened also, and it was only by a supreme effort that I retained my position.

The inclination with me was to allow myself to float, from the unmistakable sense of buoyancy that invaded all my body, and with that came to my sensorium a most peculiar incomputable sensation of diffusion. I cannot put it into words. It felt like a dissolution, as if the material substance of which I was composed were undergoing dispersion or extension, and the solvent was this strengthening light. But the sensation was also peculiarly delightful so that, while you felt yourself as it were vanishing, there was no sickness of fear with it, nor any, the slightest, physical resistance. I feel certain it was the prelude to unconsciousness. Some residual wakefulness, springing from my curiosity, saved me from the invited surrender, and I slowly rose to my feet, still holding Gabrielle's hands.

Then I looked at my sister, and, so it seemed, in that gloom there had developed around her head a half nebulous curtain or aureole of light also, which, in its turn, was emitting the peculiar light beams. It was at that moment I dropped her hands, that had become almost lifeless to my feeling. In an instant the previous sense of dematerialization left me, and with a shock, absurdly like the flying back of widely distended or separated limbs, I became keenly conscious, and concretely centered. I remember the faint thrill of amusement that this _réassemblage_ caused to me. And now--there was not much desire on my part to be ratiocinative--the other point, the emergent initial centre of the emanations grew, not only brighter, but greatly larger, and I divined with a sudden consternation of heart, that there were forming before me the outlines of a human figure. I shrank backward for an instant, and for an instant only, and then bent forward and moved forward with the increasing light, for now the adjutant centres--that about the evolving apparition, and that around my sister--both increased, filling my eyes with the radiance, and yet administering no particular illumination to the objects in the room. These latter were perhaps more visible than they had been. That I think was incontestable, but the light might have been described as self-centered, in this sense, that it was entirely refluent on its source and confined in its illuminating effect to that.

And now--I lost sight of everything else, so concentrated was my thought upon the spectacle--the light to the side and in the depth of the room expanded rapidly, and the shape that it made was that of a naked phosphorescent figure, whose configuration, while it was discerned, was not really revealed, so bathed it seemed to be in the billowy light that encumbered it, and yet exposed it. Only the arms of the figure escaped that luminous envelope, and, stretching outward beyond it, put on the semblance of white flesh. I put my hand to my head. It was wet with the dew of perspiration, that may have been the sweat of amazement, or of excitement.

The intention so dearly formed of seizing my restored Blanchette died away before this immaculate phenomenon, for in it there dawned no reminiscence of the earthly charm I had called by that name. That loveliness whose perishable garb of color and of matter I had worshipped was not suggested here; the showery lightness that seemed tremulous with a thousand interior responses had its wonderfulness indeed, but it only left me wonder-stricken. Neither did it appall me. I became chilled into immobility, although every nerve was shaking with the impressed realization of a miracle. I was standing before the resurrected DEAD.

Whether it was this thought or the resuscitated passion of my heart, rebelling against the incandescent splendor, I do not know, but I suddenly stepped towards the scintillating object and spoke: "Blanchette! Blanchette! Blanchette!" My voice was instinct with the note of human passion, the earthly cry of love for the reality of warmth, and softness, and breath, and fragrance, the concomitants of the living body--and, as my words were repeated, and again repeated, and my arms were outstretched, while my face, bathed in the sepulchral light, perhaps might have showed my yearning, this marvellous and stupendous reality occurred:

The phosphorescent configuration with the extended arms grew paler and paler, and as its extreme blurry splendor died away, there sprang forward from within it, the real similitude of Blanchette, a pallid figure of light, and in it the dear face of the girl, tender, divinely, to my eyes, beautiful, with now a compassionate wistfulness of prettiness, O! so faintly expressed, in the dim radiance that seemed yet to stream with undulous waves through the room from the relaxed, motionless body of my sister. And--so it appeared to me--the figure advanced towards me with the same outstretched arms, with which I leaped forward to receive it.

I clasped the empty air and fell headlong in a convulsion, that rattled my very bones, while sharp strokes of pain severed my muscles, and throbs, like the intermittent knocks of a hammer, beat within my brain. It was an utterly unnatural collapse; the strained attitude of the last few hours, with the previous anticipation--unsuspectingly untying the resistance of my nerves--did not clearly explain it. There was something else. I was still quite conscious and, more than that, I was wrathful with disappointment, as if caught in a trick of deception, the hocus-pocus of a mere _niaiserie_. My eyes watched the faded spot of light from which the transfiguration had started. It actually flitted unevenly for some moments over my fallen body, and then it moved slowly--now contracted into a mere ball of luminosity--towards my yet unawakened sister. There it increased in brilliancy, and the former glowing outline, with the resumed extended arms, reappeared, and then came the last denouement. In an instant there was a flashing collision between the light of the vision and the light, seemingly emitted by my sister, when the entire room became vivid with light--everything seen, with absolutely nothing there but my sister and myself, and then the darkness again more profound by contrast, and swimming--the word is exactly descriptive--upward, and then sideways a ball, a mere star, of brightness, sparkled for one second in the fire-place, and vanished.

There was no sound, there had not been an audible word, and now there was the undisturbed apartment with myself spread out in pain on the floor, and my sister still in her unbroken trance. I struggled to my feet and seized Gabrielle's hands and drew her up. She awoke, dazed, and also in pain, standing at my side in a benumbed speechless way that startled me. I lit the lamp hurriedly, and led her to the couch, where she again fell into unconsciousness. I chafed her hands. I wet her temples. Finally she slowly responded to the treatment, and I was able to lead her to her room. She had by that time become normal, but reticent and oppressed, and begged me to leave. I went away.

My own distress lasted some hours, but slowly improved, the jolts of pain growing less, and at longer intervals, and succumbing to my complete restoration.

The next day found Gabrielle and myself talking in the garden at the same spot where we had conceived of the seance; we had both been almost feverishly waiting the opportunity to rehearse our experience. We met almost as if by agreement, walking down the garden, on opposite sides at the same time, as to a _rendez-vous_.

I related everything to Gabrielle as I had seen it, and asked her about her own experience. I said, "Gabrielle, I think that it is best not to indulge this power of yours any longer. It was a disappointment every way, and the results only unhealthy and stupid."

"Alfred," she replied, "I have often brought back the spirits of the dead, not by my own will but because they came to me willingly, and it has never hurt me. It seemed a delight rather, and the sensations were blissful. But it was all different last night. It was spoiled somehow. There was some discord, something improper in our thoughts--_in yours_, _Alfred_?"

"Gabrielle, just what happened to yourself, when you fell away in the trance?"

"I seemed to be rising upward on wings, with sunny lights shining upon me, and the endless shimmering of spirit bodies about me, and then came a darkness with a despairing feeling of loneliness and of desertion, and then a slow, consuming pain until you waked me."

"Gabrielle, have you ever actually seen the spirits? Were they, as the jargon goes, materialized before your eyes?"

"Not exactly, perhaps. They came to me in my sleep, but I have indeed--so it seems to me--awakened and found the air about me filled with shapes. They did not last, wavering away with swingings this way and that, but their faces smiled as they went off, and a low pleasant light remained; that too gently--_doucement_--fading away."

We walked slowly back again towards the house, quite silent. I, buried in a reverie of self-dissatisfaction, Gabrielle doubtless in one of afflicted wonder. At length I said, stopping abruptly, and turning Gabrielle towards me, as I often did, with my two hands clasping her shoulders, "Gabrielle, let us agree to banish these practices. It may cost you an effort, but I believe it is best for both of us. We shall lose our wits with these devilments." Gabrielle resented that, and her face showed her protest. "Well, not that exactly," I added quickly, "let us call them illusions. Some scientific wiseacres call them _hypnagogic_ illusions. It is not altogether normal and reasonable and--" I hesitated a moment, and Gabrielle added, "You mean improper, unhealthy, unsafe?"

"Yes I mean all that, and then I think by some occultism we cannot define, or even recognize, they will torment us, and actually drag us into lunacy."

"Alfred, did you see Blanchette?"

"Why, yes, I saw something that brought her distinctly before me for an instant--but, Gabrielle," I was ashamed to betray my hope for some sort of bodily incarnation, "it was only a madness of the brain--only that."

"But, Alfred, you did see the light; they always come in light-clouds--_les voiles de lumière_."

"Oh, yes, I saw the shining figure--so it seemed--and the light, Gabrielle, that seemed to stream from your head in rays. All that I saw, but whether it was an actual light, or some infernal hallucination, or just some mesmeric phenomena, and we both were asleep, I fear to say. But it has left me queerly disgusted and upset. At any rate I will have nothing more to do with it--nothing. My work (Redaction of the Code Législatif for Court Practice) will be interfered with, and then perhaps my poor brain will leave me altogether."

We laughed, and at length Gabrielle answered, liberating herself from my hold and musingly watching the sparrows twittering and flying spasmodically in swarms from the thicketed ampelopsis on the house. Her voice was low, and its accent firm, and half persuasive too.

"Alfred, I will go half way. I will do nothing to bring back the visions, but if they come I shall not scare them away. And as for séances--well, we both have had all we want of them. Eh?"

"Truly Gabrielle, I think that if we continued these visitations, if they are that, it would be with us as it was with Argan in _Le Malade Imaginaire_, who was threatened by Dr. Purgan, you know, after a long line of disorders, _avec la privation de la vie, ou nous aura conduit notre folie_."

I never again spoke about the spirits to Gabrielle. I grew strangely fearful of them, the thought of them made me shudder--until the war brought upon us the awful visitation that I have written this book to describe, and which--Well, what it did is now the common knowledge of the world. Nor did Gabrielle allude to them until the gathering terrors of the dead broke her silence. And to describe that moment and its undreamed of marvels, its vast resurrections from the holocausts of the battle fields, the fathomless panorama of the endless dead, with the stupefying and convulsing climax of the horrid warfare, choked by their immitigable hosts, is now my dangerous and difficult task.

* * * * *

Father and mother returned from Briois most radiant over their success. Père Grandin was superb, a wonderful man, _un homme de sagesse, de piété, et, ma Foi, un homme des affaires; enfin, un homme eloquent et fin aussi_. He would come to St. Choiseul, and it was certain that Père Grandin and Père Antoine would get on well together.

The spring was all about us; each day added to the charm of the country-side and the gardens of St. Choiseul grew gayer and gayer with the snowy and carmine splendor of the tulips, the purple glories of the hyacinth, the blossoming trails of periwinkle, leading at last to the zenith loveliness of the blushing roses, when St. Choiseul sent its fragrant breath far and wide over the green meadows, and far into the thick-set and shadowed woods.

The _bienséance_ of nature was seen too in the overflowing happiness of the country, its peace and increasing wealth, with the flow towards it of the gracious friendliness of the peoples, and the establishment among us of the pure principles of liberty. Indeed we were all gay. Privat Deschat's hideous predictions that evening so long ago--how long ago it indeed seemed, as if in another age; that was before I went to America--were all forgotten, or if recalled just laughed at--and yet there had been the Agadir affair and there had been disturbances in Alsace and cruel muttering elsewhere; the Cassagnac matter and the German correspondents. But that was nothing--_une bagatelle simplement_--and so the bright years rolled along, braided with delights, illustrious with hopes, serene with gifts, not altogether free from acquiescent tears, while the inevitable CALAMITY came closer and closer, and like a thunderbolt crashed suddenly from the peaceful skies, and darkened all the world with its despair and misery.