And now Cosmo was in wretched plight. Since the thought of a rival
had occurred to him, he could not rest for a moment. More than ever he
longed to see the lady face to face. He persuaded himself that if he but
knew the worst he would be satisfied; for then he could abandon Prague,
and find that relief in constant motion, which is the hope of all active
minds when invaded by distress. Meantime he waited with unspeakable
anxiety for the next night, hoping she would return: but she did not
appear. And now he fell really ill. Rallied by his fellow students on
his wretched looks, he ceased to attend the lectures. His engagements
were neglected. He cared for nothing, The sky, with the great sun in it,
was to him a heartless, burning desert. The men and women in the streets
were mere puppets, without motives in themselves, or interest to him. He
saw them all as on the ever-changing field of a camera obscura. She--she
alone and altogether--was his universe, his well of life, his incarnate
good. For six evenings she came not. Let his absorbing passion, and
the slow fever that was consuming his brain, be his excuse for the
resolution which he had taken and begun to execute, before that time had
expired.
Reasoning with himself, that it must be by some enchantment connected
with the mirror, that the form of the lady was to be seen in it, he
determined to attempt to turn to account what he had hitherto studied
principally from curiosity. "For," said he to himself, "if a spell can
force her presence in that glass (and she came unwillingly at first),
may not a stronger spell, such as I know, especially with the aid of
her half-presence in the mirror, if ever she appears again, compel
her living form to come to me here? If I do her wrong, let love be
my excuse. I want only to know my doom from her own lips." He never
doubted, all the time, that she was a real earthly woman; or, rather,
that there was a woman, who, somehow or other, threw this reflection of
her form into the magic mirror.
He opened his secret drawer, took out his books of magic, lighted his
lamp, and read and made notes from midnight till three in the morning,
for three successive nights. Then he replaced his books; and the next
night went out in quest of the materials necessary for the conjuration.
These were not easy to find; for, in love-charms and all incantations of
this nature, ingredients are employed scarcely fit to be mentioned,
and for the thought even of which, in connexion with her, he could only
excuse himself on the score of his bitter need. At length he succeeded
in procuring all he required; and on the seventh evening from that on
which she had last appeared, he found himself prepared for the exercise
of unlawful and tyrannical power.