Chapter 173

160 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE was so serpentine that at no moment could I trace its course for more than two or three paces in advance. Its character did not undergo any material change. Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my ear, and in a few moments afterwards, as I turned with the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto, I became aware that a building of some kind lay at the foot of a gentle declivity just before me. I could see nothing distinctly on account of the mist which occupied all the little valley below. A gentle breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was about descending ; and while I remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into wreaths, and so it floated over the scene. As it came fully into view, thus gradually as I describe it, piece by piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of the ingenius illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of “vanishing pictures.,, By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun had made its way down behind the gentle hills, and thence, as if with a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight, glaring with a purplish luster through a chasm that entered the valley from the west. Suddenly, therefore, and as if by the hand of magic, this whole valley and everything in it became brilliantly visible. The first coup d’ ceil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I have been impressed when a boy by the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama. Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting, for the sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less upon all objects, from the curtain of vapor that still hung overhead, as if loath to take its