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

my hands, I hastened to the library, with no thought save to read the
proscribed manuscript. Giving scarcely a glance at the laden shelves, I
sought the table with the secret drawer, and fumbled for the spring.
After a little anxious delay, I pressed the proper spot and drew forth the
drawer. An impulsion that had become a veritable obsession, a fever of
curiosity that bordered upon actual madness, drove me, and if the
safety of my soul had really depended upon it, I could not have denied
the desire which forced me to take from the drawer the thin volume
with plain unlettered binding.
Seating myself in a chair near one of the windows, I began to peruse
the pages, which were only six in number. The writing was peculiar,
with letter-forms of a fantasticality I had never met before, and the
French was not only old but well-night barbarous in its quaint
singularity. Notwithstanding the difficulty I found in deciphering them,
a mad, unaccountable thrill ran through me at the first words, and I
read on with all the sensations of a man who had been bewitched or
who had drunken a philtre of bewildering potency.. €
There was no title, no date, and the writing was a narrative which
began almost as abruptly as it ended. It concerned one Gerard, Comte
de Venteillon, who, on the eve of his marriage to the renowned and
beautiful demoiselle, Eleanor des Lys, had met in the forest near his
chateau a strange, half-human creature with hoofs and horns. Now
Gerard, as the narrative explained, was a knightly youth of indisputably
proven valor, as wdl as a true Christian; so, in the name of our Savior,
Jesus Christ, he bade the creature stand and give an account of itself.
Laughing wildly in the twilight, the bizarre being capered before
him, and cried:
'I am a satyr, and your Christ is less to me than the weeds that grow
on your kitchen-middens.'
Appalled by such blasphemy, Gerard would have drawn his sword
to slay the creature, but again it cried, saying:
'Stay, Gerard de Venteillon, and I will tell you a secret, knowing
which, you will forget the worship of Christ, and forget your beautiful
bride of tomorrow, and turn your back on the world and on the very
sun itself with no reluctance and no regret.'
Now, albeit half uawillingly, Gerard lent the satyr an ear and it came
closer and whispered to him. And that which it whispered is not
known; but before it vanished amid the blackening shadows of the
forest, the satyr spoke aloud once more, and said:
'The power of Christ has prevailed like a black frost on all the
woods, the fields, the rivers, the mountains, where abode in their
felicity the glad, immortal goddesses and nymphs of yore. But still, in
the cryptic caverns of earth, in places far underground, like the hell
your priests have fabled, there dwells the pagan loveliness, there cry the
pagan ecstasies.' And with the last words, the creature laughed again its
wild unhuman laugh, and disappeared among the darkening boles of
the twilight trees.
From that moment, a change was upon Gerard de Venteillon. He
returned to his chateau with downcast mien, speaking no cheery or
kindly word to his retainers, as was his wont, but sitting or pacing