The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX One knows what desperate resistance he made to his executioners. “It is treason,” said he; “I cannot die so! Only one hour, an hour to write to the Emperor! The Emperor is bound to save me.” Who, then, was betraying him? Who, then, had promised him life? Who, then, had assured him beforehand of a clemency which was impossible, because it would revolt the conscience of the public? Ask all that of the grimotve of Honorius! Two incidents in this tragic story bear upon the phe- nomena produced by Mr. Home: the noise of the storm heard by the wicked priest in his early evocations, and the difficulty which he found in expressing his real thought in the presence of Eliphas Levi. One may also comment upon the apparition of the sinister man taking pleasure in the public grief, and uttering an indeed infernal word in the midst of the consternation of the crowd, an apparition only noticed by the ecstatic of La Salette, the too celebrated Mlle. de La Merliére, who has the air after all of a worthy individual, but very excitable, and perhaps capable of acting and speaking without knowing it herself, under the influence of a sort of ascetic sleep-waking. This word “sleep-waking” brings us back to Mr. Home, and our anecdotes have not made us forget what the title of this work promised to our readers. We ought, then, to tell them what Mr. Home is. We keep our promise. Mr. Home ts an invalid suffering from a contagious sleep- waking. 178