LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1380, 18 July 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN THE DUSK AT DUSSELDORF.

A Sthakok Expkeiknce. {London Society.) (Concluded,) ' Bah .' what an ass I have been !' I said to myself ; but directly I thought straight back on the affair, I was more convinced than ever that, whatever my conduct, its causes were facts. It was a bright sunshiny morning, with that sort of dazzling light everywhere which I was above all things to avoid exposing myself to. So after breakfast I sat in the darkened studio, with my man in the chamber reading to me. By this arrangement he could Bee the book, and I could hear him through the half opened door of communication between the rooms, the separate doors of which, leading to the anteroom, were both closed. Well, we had thus been sitting for half an hour or so, and I had begun to be deeply interested in what I was listening to, when suddenly nil my thoughts were distracted, all my wits scared, by the knock at the studio door, exactly as before—the single gentle knock, exactly like that last night. With it, too, on the instant came a slight renewal of the old shiver and creepy goose-flesh feeling. My man ceased reading; he had heard the knock as plainly as I. ' What was that, sir," he asked presently. I called him in, and whispering told him part of my experience of the previous evening. ' Keep quiet and listen,' I said, my teeth all but chattering; 'you will hear it again in a few minutes.' We were both silent, and, sure enough, after a short interval, there it was. He was going forward to the door. I checked him. 'No,' I went on ; ' look out of the bedroom door, go on tip-toe and open it very softly, and see what you can make out.' ' I need not open it at all, sir,' he answered; ' there is a window in it with a curtain across it.* I followed him as he went back to the bedroom, and saw him gently draw aside the curtain, which I had not noticed. ' What do you see ?' I whispered. He was looking through into the anteroom. ' Nothing,' waß the answer, 'it is so dark.' But at that instant the knock was repeated. ' Can you not see the studio door ?' I said. ' Yes, sir; I can just make it out, and I see something shining in the middle of it, about three feet from the floor.'

There was another pause, and in the silence the knock was heard again. We both drew back. Before we could either of us speak footsteps were on the landing, and I recognised the doctor's voice speaking to the porter, who evidently was showing him up to my apartments. In another moment he had entered the bedroom, to my intense relief. Briefly and hastily I explained what had happened just then and the night before. 'Coot gracious!' he exclaimed, in his broken English ; ' vy, it must be poor Cato ! O, te most vonderful beast ; n do ! Tid I not tell you of Cato te cat ? No, I not. Mein friend Smir-t has trained him to to all tings but speak. Friz te porter has te charge of him ; but of course he escape to make te examination of his master's rooms j he toes not understand vy he is not to admit himself as usual.'

'But,' I interposed, 'does he knock at the door when he wants to admit himself ? How can he do that ?'

The doctor laughed good-humoredly. ' Ah, I have not told you. No, naturlich. Smitt has put te leetle prass knocker on te door for him to strike. He alwayß strike vis his paw vent he vont to come in ; lift so vis his leetle hand—so,' and the doctor, still laughing, imitated the action with his hand against the corner of a hanging picture frame. A light was beginning to break in upon me. ' And has Mr Smith, may I ask, been painting Cato's portrait lately ?' 'O, yes, te most vonderful likeness in te vorld, te most vonderful sketch, size of life—an illusion, a deception!'

' Ah, and it stands on the chair by the high window,' I said. ' Yes, te favorite chair vair Oato sit always to vat oh for te mouse; te hole is tareby below. Smitt has made him to sit like as in his picture as like to him sitting. He stand it on te chair to make te deception complete ; so tat when te cat is not there, te picture look aB if te cat was te cat there.'

' That was it, then, of course,' I went on. 'He knocked at the door, I opened it; he slipped by me unseen, and also unseen perched on his chair, just in front of his picture, until in the dusk I ohanced to observe his tail move.'

' 0 yes, 0 yes! ten he Bee a mouse, and, ah, ah! he pounce—that is, the cat out of te bag, SB you say.' ' Yes, of course,' I said; 'and in the dusk, with my imperfect eight, I conceived it as I have related.'

' Ah, tear me, yes; vot a fuss! how you have set your pulse going! Come now, be calm, and sit down.' We had walked into the studio, and the cat, having slipped in, and knowing the doctor, advanced with a friendly purr to meet him. All the while I had been talking my cold creepy feeling had been upon me, and now increased violently. ' Ah, to be sure, I see now,' went on the doctor. ' You are affected by te presence, electrically, of te cat. Yes, a strange instance, interesting to observe. You have known it before ?' ' Never to this ext ent. I have never liked cats ; this one is very peculiar' ; and I shrank within myself as the huge creature, remarkable alike for its size and dusky spotted coat, approached. The doctor made a gesture of repelling it, speaking meanwhile to it in Carman. It seemed to understand in a moment, and with a bound lighted upon the chair in front of the picture, and settling itself exactly in the samt, position, and exactly in front of its lifelike presentment upon the canvas, looked, as it had done the night before, like a living portrait. ' Yes, mused the doctor, as ho sat down beside me, still with his finger on my pulse, 'it is very interesting, tie electric expression of te antipaty, curious to observe in you — very marked, increased doubtless by te depression of nervous energy under which you are suffering.' ' Can you account for it scientifically ? ' I said, still shivering horribly. 'No ; not easy,' he answered, 'to explain te physical alteration vich must be taking place in to anatomical substratum of your consciousness. Your Shakespeare knew of it, but not scientifically. He makes te old Shylock say, ' Some men tare are love not a gaping pig; Some tat are made if tey behold a cat; for affection, Mistress of passions, sways it to te mood Of what it likes or loates.' Fah ! I vill trive te beast out of te room; it is bad to agitate you.' He drove the cat away, and took such precaution as prevented my being again disturbed during my month's residence in Dusseldorf—a month which, thanks to the skilful treatment I received, ended with the complete restoration of my sight, but not in my reconciliation to cats.