The Valley of Decision

by Edith Wharton

  “This,” said he, in measured accents, “is an evocation of the Temple of Health, into whose blissful precincts the wisdom of the ancients was able to lead the sufferer who put his trust in them. This deceptio visus, or product of rhabdomancy, easily effected by an adept of the Egyptian mysteries, is designed but to prefigure the reality which awaits those who seek health through the ministry of the disciples of Iamblichus. It is no longer denied among men of learning that those who have been instructed in the secret doctrine of the ancients are able, by certain correspondences of nature, revealed only to the initiated, to act on the inanimate world about them, and on the animal economy, by means beyond the common capabilities of man.” He paused a moment, and then, turning with a low bow to the Duke, enquired whether his Highness desired the rites to proceed.

  The Duke signed his assent, and Heiligenstern, raising his wand, evoked another volume of mist. This time it was shot through with green flames, and as the wild light subsided the room was once more revealed with its black hangings, and the lamps flickered into life again.

  After another pause, doubtless intended to increase the tension of the spectators, the magician bade his servant place the crystal before him.

  He then raised his hands as if in prayer, speaking in a strange chanting jargon, in which Odo detected fragments of Greek and Latin, and the recurring names of the Judaic demons and angels. As this ceased Heiligenstern beckoned to the Georgian boy, who approached him with bowed head and reverently folded hands.

  “Your Highness,” said Heiligenstern, “and this distinguished company, are doubtless familiar with the magic crystal of the ancients, in which the future may be deciphered by the pure in heart. This lad, whom I rescued from slavery and have bred to my service in the solemn rites of the priesthood of Isis, is as clear in spirit as the crystal which stands before you. The future lies open to him in this translucent sphere and he is prepared to disclose it at your bidding.”

  There was a moment’s silence; but on the magician’s repeating his enquiry the Duke said: “Let the boy tell me what he sees.”

  Heiligenstern at once laid his hands on his acolyte’s head and murmured a few words over him; then the boy advanced and bent devoutly above the crystal. Almost immediately the globe was seen to cloud, as though suffused with milk; the cloud gradually faded and the boy began to speak in a low hesitating tone.

  “I see,” he said, “I see a face…a fair face…” He faltered and glanced up almost apprehensively at Heiligenstern, whose gaze remained impenetrable. The boy began to tremble. “I see nothing,” he said in a whisper. “There is one here purer than I…the crystal will not speak for me in that other’s presence…”

  “Who is that other?” Heiligenstern asked.

  The boy fixed his eyes on the little prince. An excited murmur ran through the company and Heiligenstern again advanced to the Duke. “Will your Highness,” he asked, “permit the prince to look into the sacred sphere?”

  Odo saw the Duchess extend her hand impulsively toward the child; but at a signal from the Duke the little prince’s chair was carried to the table on which the crystal stood. Instantly the former phenomenon was repeated, the globe clouding and then clearing itself like a pool after rain.

  “Speak, my son,” said the Duke. “Tell us what the heavenly powers reveal to you.”

  The little prince continued to pore over the globe without speaking.

  Suddenly his thin face reddened and he clung more closely to his companion’s arm.

  “I see a beautiful place,” he began, his small fluting voice rising like a bird’s pipe in the stillness, “a place a thousand times more beautiful than this…like a garden…full of golden-haired children…with beautiful strange toys in their hands…they have wings like birds…they ARE birds…ah! they are flying away from me…I see them no more…they vanish through the trees…” He broke off sadly.

  Heiligenstern smiled. “That, your Highness, is a vision of the prince’s own future, when, restored to health, he is able to disport himself with his playmates in the gardens of the palace.”

  “But they were not the gardens of the palace!” the little boy exclaimed.

  “They were much more beautiful than our gardens.”

  Heiligenstern bowed. “They appeared so to your Highness,” he deferentially suggested, “because all the world seems more beautiful to those who have regained their health.”

  “Enough, my son!” exclaimed the Duchess with a shaken voice. “Why will you weary the child?” she continued, turning to the Duke; and the latter, with evident reluctance, signed to Heiligenstern to cover the crystal. To the general surprise, however, Prince Ferrante pushed back the black velvet covering which the Georgian boy was preparing to throw over it.

  “No, no,” he exclaimed, in the high obstinate voice of the spoiled child, “let me look again…let me see some more beautiful things…I have never seen anything so beautiful, even in my sleep!” It was the plaintive cry of the child whose happiest hours are those spent in unconsciousness.

  “Look again, then,” said the Duke, “and ask the heavenly powers what more they have to show you.”

  The boy gazed in silence; then he broke out: “Ah, now we are in the palace…I see your Highness’s cabinet…no, it is the bedchamber…it is night…and I see your Highness lying asleep…very still…very still…your Highness wears the scapular received last Easter from his Holiness…It is very dark…Oh, now a light begins to shine…where does it come from? Through the door? No, there is no door on that side of the room…It shines through the wall at the foot of the bed…ah! I see”—his voice mounted to a cry—“The old picture at the foot of the bed…the picture with the wicked people burning in it…has opened like a door…the light is shining through it…and now a lady steps out from the wall behind the picture…oh, so beautiful…she has yellow hair, as yellow as my mother’s…but longer…oh, much longer…she carries a rose in her hand…and there are white doves flying about her shoulders…she is naked, quite naked, poor lady! but she does not seem to mind…she seems to be laughing about it…and your Highness…”

  The Duke started up violently. “Enough—enough!” he stammered. “The fever is on the child…this agitation is…most pernicious…Cover the crystal, I say!”

  He sank back, his forehead damp with perspiration. In an instant the crystal had been removed, and Prince Ferrante carried back to his mother’s side. The boy seemed in nowise affected by his father’s commotion. His eyes burned with excitement, and he sat up eagerly, as though not to miss a detail of what was going forward. Maria Clementina leaned over and clasped his hand, but he hardly noticed her. “I want to see some more beautiful things!” he insisted.

  The Duke sat speechless, a fallen heap in his chair, and the courtiers looked at each other, their faces shifting spectrally in the faint light, like phantom travellers waiting to be ferried across some mysterious river. At length Heiligenstern advanced and with every mark of deference addressed himself to the Duke.

  “Your Highness,” said he quietly, “need be under no apprehension as to the effect produced upon the prince. The magic crystal, as your Highness is aware, is under the protection of the blessed spirits, and its revelations cannot harm those who are pure-minded enough to receive them. But the chief purpose of this assemblage was to witness the communication of vital force to the prince, by means of the electrical current. The crystal, by revealing its secrets to the prince, has testified to his perfect purity of mind, and thus declared him to be in a peculiarly fit state to receive what may be designated as the Sacrament of the new faith.”

  A murmur ran through the room, but Heiligenstern continued without wavering: “I mean thereby to describe that natural religion which, by instructing its adepts in the use of the hidden potencies of earth and air, testifies afresh to the power of the unseen Maker of the Universe.”

  The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an assumption of authority: “Let the treatment begin.”<
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  Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity.

  Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls.

  Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the little prince from his chair and laid him gently on the bed. The magician then leaned over the boy with a slow weaving motion of the hands.

  “If your Highness will be pleased to sleep,” he said, “I promise your Highness the most beautiful dreams.”

  The boy smiled back at him and he continued to bend above the bed with flitting hands. Suddenly the little prince began to laugh.

  “What does your Highness feel?” the magician asked.

  “A prickling…such a soft warm prickling…as if my blood were sunshine with motes dancing in it…or as if that sparkling wine of France were running all over my body.”

  “It is an agreeable sensation, your Highness?”

  The boy nodded.

  “It is well with your Highness?”

  “Very well.”

  Heiligenstern began a loud rhythmic chant, and gradually the air darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which sparks could be seen flickering like fireflies about the reclining prince. The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like seaweed on the lift of the tide.

  He stood spellbound, lulled, yielding himself to a blissful dissolution.

  Suddenly he became aware that the hush was too intense, too complete; and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst terrifically into sound. A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through it like a tangible mass. The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round the little prince’s body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness, in which the confused herding movements of startled figures were indistinguishably merged. A flash of silence followed; then the liberated forces of the night broke in rain and thunder on the rocking walls of the room.

  “Light—light!” some one stammered; and at the same moment a door was flung open, admitting a burst of candle-light and a group of figures in ecclesiastical dress, against which the white gown and black hood of Father Ignazio detached themselves. The Dominican stepped toward the Duke.

  “Your Highness,” said he in a tone of quiet resolution, “must pardon this interruption; I act at the bidding of the Holy Office.”

  Even in that moment of profound disarray the name sent a deeper shudder through his hearers. The Duke, who stood grasping the arms of his chair, raised his head and tried to stare down the intruders; but no one heeded his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings, the magician’s appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn up undaunted against the hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched the little prince from his stretcher, and Maria Clementina, holding him to her breast, sat palely confronting the sorcerer. She alone seemed to measure her strength against his in some mysterious conflict of the will. But meanwhile the Duke had regained his voice.

  “My father,” said he, “on what information does the Holy Office act?”

  The Dominican drew a parchment from his breast. “On that of the Inquisitor General, your Highness,” he replied, handing the paper to the Duke, who unfolded it with trembling hands but was plainly unable to master its contents. Father Ignazio beckoned to an ecclesiastic who had entered the room in his train.

  “This, your Highness,” said he, “is the abate de Crucis of Innsbruck, who was lately commissioned by the Holy Office to enquire into the practises and doctrine of the order of the Illuminati, that corrupt and atheistical sect which has been the cause of so much scandal among the German principalities. In the course of his investigations he became aware that the order had secretly established a lodge in Pianura; and hastening hither from Rome to advise your Highness of the fact, has discovered in the so-called Count Heiligenstern one of the most notorious apostles of the order.” He turned to the priest. “Signor abate,” he said, “you confirm these facts?”

  The abate de Crucis quietly advanced. He was a slight pale man of about thirty, with a thoughtful and indulgent cast of countenance.

  “In every particular,” said he, bowing profoundly to the Duke, and speaking in a low voice of singular sweetness. “It has been my duty to track this man’s career from its ignoble beginning to its infamous culmination, and I have been able to place in the hands of the Holy Office the most complete proofs of his guilt. The so-called Count Heiligenstern is the son of a tailor in a small village of Pomerania.

  After passing through various vicissitudes with which I need not trouble your Highness, he obtained the confidence of the notorious Dr.

  Weishaupt, the founder of the German order of the Illuminati, and together this precious couple have indefatigably propagated their obscene and blasphemous doctrines. That they preach atheism and tyrannicide I need not tell your Highness; but it is less generally known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private vices from which even paganism would have recoiled. The man now before me, among other open offences against society, is known to have seduced a young girl of noble family in Ratisbon and to have murdered her child.

  His own wife and children he long since abandoned and disowned; and the youth yonder, whom he describes as a Georgian slave rescued from the Grand Signior’s galleys, is in fact the wife of a Greek juggler of Ravenna, and has forsaken her husband to live in criminal intercourse with an atheist and assassin.”

  This indictment, pronounced with an absence of emotion which made each word cut the air like the separate stroke of a lash, was followed by a prolonged silence; then one of the Duchess’s ladies cried out suddenly and burst into tears. This was the signal for a general outbreak. The room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke’s sbirri making their way quietly through the crowd. The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm flung about his trembling acolyte. The Duchess, her boy still clasped against her, remained proudly seated; but her eyes met Odo’s in a glance of terrified entreaty, and at the same instant he felt a clutch on his sleeve and heard Cantapresto’s whisper.

  “Cavaliere, a boat waits at the landing below the tanners’ lane. The shortest way to it is through the gardens and your excellency will find the gate beyond the Chinese pavilion unlocked.”

  He had vanished before Odo could look round. The latter still wavered; but as he did so he caught Trescorre’s face through the crowd. The minister’s eye was fixed on him; and the discovery was enough to make him plunge through the narrow wake left by Cantapresto’s retreat.

  Odo made his way unhindered to the ante-room, which was also thronged, ecclesiastics, servants and even beggars from the courtyard jostling each other in their struggle to see what was going forward. The confusion favoured his escape, and a moment later he was hastening down the tapestry gallery and through the vacant corridors of the palace. He was familiar with half-a-dozen short-cuts across this network of passages; but in his bewilderment he pressed on down the great stairs and across the echoing guardroom that opened on the terrace. A drowsy sentinel challenged h
im; and on Odo’s explaining that he sought to leave, and not to enter, the palace, replied that he had his Highness’s orders to let no one out that night. For a moment Odo was at a loss; then he remembered his passport. It seemed to him an interminable time before the sentinel had scrutinised it by the light of a guttering candle, and to his surprise he found himself in a cold sweat of fear.

  The rattle of the storm simulated footsteps at his heels and he felt the blind rage of a man within shot of invisible foes.

  The passport restored, he plunged out into the night. It was pitch-black in the gardens and the rain drove down with the guttural rush of a midsummer storm. So fierce was its fall that it seemed to suck up the earth in its black eddies, and he felt himself swept along over a heaving hissing surface, with wet boughs lashing out at him as he fled.

  From one terrace to another he dropped to lower depths of buffeting dripping darkness, till he found his hand on the gate-latch and swung to the black lane below the wall. Thence on a run he wound to the tanners’

  quarter by the river: a district commonly as foul-tongued as it was ill-favoured, but tonight clean-purged of both evils by the vehement sweep of the storm. Here he groped his way among slippery places and past huddled out-buildings to the piles of the wharf. The rain was now subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat of a boat’s bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the current and were swept down through the rushing darkness.

  BOOK III. THE CHOICE.

  The Vision touched him on the lips and said: Hereafter thou shalt eat me in thy bread, Drink me in all thy kisses, feel my hand Steal ‘twixt thy palm and Joy’s, and see me stand Watchful at every crossing of the ways, The insatiate lover of thy nights and days.