"Smith, Clark Ashton - Tales of Averoigne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

through the tumult of their blood the cachinnation of a wild and evil
and panic laughter, as the apparition vanished among the boughs.
Shuddering, Adele flung herself for the first time into the arms of
her lover.
'Did you see it?' she whispered, as she clung to him.
0livier drew her close. In that delicious nearness, the horrible thing
he had seen and heard became somehow improbable and unreal. There. __
must have been a double sorcery abroad, to lull his horror thus; but he
knew not whether the thing had been a momentary hallucination, a
fantasy wrought by the sun amid the alder-leaves, or the demon that
was fabled to dwell in Averoigne; and the startlement he had felt was
somehow without meaning or reason. He could even thank the
apparition, whatever it was, because it had thrown Adele into his
embrace. He could think of nothing now but the proximity of that
warm, delectable mouth, for which he had hungered so long. He began
to reassure her, to make light of her fears, to pretend that she could
have seen nothing; and his reassurances merged into ardent
protestations of love. He kissed her... and they both forgot the vision of
the satyr....
They were lying on a gatch of golden moss, where the sunrays fell
through a single cleft in the high foliage, when Raoul found them. They
did not see or hear him, as he paused and stood with drawn rapier
before the vision of their unlawful happiness.
He was about to fling himself upon them and impale the two with a
single thrust where they lay, when an unlooked-for and scarce
conceivable thing occurred. With swiftness veritably supernatural, a
brown hairy creature, a being that was not wholly man, not wholly
animal, but some hellish mixture of both, sprang from amid the alder
branches and snatched Adele from Olivier's embrace. Olivier and
Raoul saw it only in one fleeting glimpse, and neither could have
described it clearly afterwards. But the face was that which had leered
upon the lovers from the foliage; and the shaggy' legs and body were
those of a creature of antique legend. It disappeared as incredibly as it
had come, bearing the woman in its arms; and her shrieks of terror
were surmounted by the pealing of its mad, diabolical laughter.
The shrieks and laughter died away at some distant remove in the
green silence of the forest, and were not followed by any other sound.
Raoul and Olivier could only stare at each other in complete
stupefaction.
[1931]._
Variant Conclusion to
"The Satyr"
[Clark Ashton Smith completed "The Satyr", his second story set in the
milieu of Averoigne, in the early spring of 1930. Manuscript materials
preserved in Brown University's Smith Papers Collection demonstrate
that Smith had first envisioned a conclusion for this tale that differs
from the final published version. This earlier variant conclusion is
reprinted below, and replaces the last three paragraphs of the published
story (Genius Loci).
It is not known whether Smith rethought his original conclusion