The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 17: what you’re looking at

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alightest breath of the chill air without to penetrate into this chamber where Royalty slept. The Prince was lying upon bis back: his eonnte- nance was flushed—the veins on his forehead were swollen—and his slumber was uneasy. The lamp- light played upon his agitated features; and as his fips were parted and his eye-lids not quite closed, the gleaming of the clenched teeth and the appear- ance of a portion of the whites of his eyes gave him a ghastly aspect—as if, although the body were locked in repose, the soul within was awake and en- during the pangs of hell. Had any one stood by his couch to contemplate him then, the effect would have been hideous and appalling on the mind of the observer: but no eye sitnessed his uneasy slumbers—none save that of ¢z0d from whose vigilance no mortal can escape ! The Prince was dreaming. It appeared to him chat a faint gauzy mist rose slewiy but steadily found his couch, until the entize spartment was and mere dense until it assumed an opaqueness and produced a stifling sensation as if he were enveloped in a thick cloud. Then a wail stole through the midnight air upon his ears,—a wail low, plaintive, and inefflably mournful as if the spirit of some de- parted mother had returned to earth to sing a lui- laby over the cradle of the babe whom she hed left Sehind her. With enthralled senees and with an interest painfully acute, did the Prince feel that his eyes were fixed upon a certain spot beyond all power ghastly procession go—the shapes alike of mothers and babes gradually losing their natural lineaments and besoming horstbie, horrible to gaze upon! And with their stony eyes did they glare on the an- guished Prince,—those eyes which lost their vital colouring and became of a dull, light, leaden blue! Yesa—mothers and babes alike glared thus on the | Prince: babes and mothers reproached him equally with their dead luatreless orbs. . And though ne word was said, yet were these corpee-like eyes as eloquent as tongues. For they renewed in the harrowed memory of the Prince all the details of his amours with those whose phan- toms now reproached him with their stony looks; —and he felt that he was a vile seducer in some in- stances and a cold-blooded ravisher in others! Then he was reminded that he was the father of those babes whose innocent lives had been extinguished almost as soon.as the- spark had gleamed ;—and the tremendous truth waa held up before him in all its darkest, biackest eclouss, that he was the man who deserved to be: stigmatised as the moral murderer— if not the actual :aseassia} And now a wild ory, whose agonising intonations evinced ail the panga. endured by the conscience- stricken man, bunst frenr his lips,—a cry that menta torture wrung frem him in his sleep,—an expression of inward poignancy sent forth from the chaos of a soul whereon the spirrt of remorse was moving! Still he awoke not: despite of the lancinating an~- guish which rent his entire being, he slumbered of withdrawal :—and there—in that spot—the cloud | on. grew thicker and more dense, until a female shape appeared.in the midst. Andaow that shape passed slowiy—slowly along before: the Prince, upon whose forehead a cold dew broke.fort; and, with feelings wrought up to horror indeserabebie, did he recognise in the apectral torm the-enne glorious beauty: ef one of the many victima of hia lust! Bat aa: be etal, gazed with hagyard eyes, another shape atood slewmlg. forth from the dark clewb;—and then. eanthner-emd.another—and an- other! And they each amd .elk were the semblance of levely gicke whaun he hadiwened and either se dened or rasished im, hin. tige,r-fain creatures who had gone dows. to. the: sounis wath. busken hearts and blighted affectione—-imakame and: infamy But although theseepestsalahapes wore tha.sem- blance of. those pestehad . vietima,. yet: wan: their nanimation of desting-—and ther fermen wensrumeggad,. in the long flowing ueieettoom. ama. Slowly, like a funsseal presessiem.did. the phsian + banat Alled with a vapour which gradually beeame more And more-quickly baggnto circle the ghastly train of phantoma round hia bes-—and yet more hideous did they grow The lamplight seemed to impart a living lustre to the wasted andkfaded lineaments, making death more: appallitg and the uprisen tenants of the grave mose:tasmble tLo.gaze upon! But by degrees they losathe fawing garments that wrapped thuivfotsse-—and their forms began to lose their flesh: and Ghee ehaneliness therewitth—until at Jast it wasa treop of bleached and gleaming, skeletons which now whirled, and whirled, and, weickedaround the bed of the princely sleeper! Mothers and babes, on thereladiatona went: babes and mothers, round and regmd:the: euch they glided on! With zatthieg bones the:ewful pageantry | of Death swept. pash:aadi: fast ;—and.on- the hosrer- stricken Pzince didi thmbideona. eaee%to oyelesnansiatal Yeter-past and: fret: went the grist arragy--motbers hahser—behes: end. mothere—all with: rettling toms move round the ceuch—eneh eireuit that thay; Asdwith the giddy'dance of the-akelsten throng, made rendering them more dasadfai to leek. apes and likewise addingsto their nuemibem. And now some: appeared to have babes in: their arms,—spectral babes as ghastly as the parents that clasped them to their marble bosoms,—babes which were the fruit of those pleasures that the Prince had purchased either by means of the most insidious perfidy or the most heartless violence! And those infants had all died either at their births or soon afterwards,—some sacrificed to the fatal compression adopted by their miserable mothers to conceal their shame—others murdered outright by suffocation, or even by a bloody: violence, during the puerperal aberrations of those dishonoured beings who gave them birth |. Round. the. Pringe’s couch did the grim and beauty glacial with theanloncheesiesak theumaells-} glare with. whinked the brain:of the maddened Pxince: torture and horves—crucifixion and anguish-~delirium and despain, sll: seamed to enwrap him with the pains of hell, He-tossed and heaved in his couch as if the voluptuous feather-bed were a huge snake coiled under him and the downy pillows were filled with scorpions. The perspiration poured off bim ina torrents: the veins of his forehead were awollen as i8 tensely strung blue cordd lay entertwined and knotted just beneath.the skin. Oh: the fieece—the wearing —the rending agony of these few minutes during which the glegming train of skeletene cireled about the royal bed ! And now—rapidly as a troop of dancers glide from the stage of a theatre when their part is over—did the hideous phantasmagoria disappear, skeleton after | = a ~ E (C SS DOO