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The gory visage of the murdered slave, the sweet and calm expression of his own Julia, the truculent eyes and sneering lip of Catiline, and the veiled glance and voluptuous smile of his too seductive daughter, whirled still before him in a strange sort of human phantasmagoria, with the deep searching look of the consul orator, the wild glare of the slaughtered Volero, and the stern face, grand and proud in his last agony, of the dying Varus.
The whole horrible phantasmagoria together with the odour of ancient rottenness faded like a fevered dream, at the moment that Dr. Cairn had burst in upon the creator of it. Robert Cairn stood up, weakly, trembling; then dropped upon his knees and sobbed out prayers of thankfulness that came from his frightened soul.
It had now become so evident which way the coroner's inquiries tended that I wished to be the first to note their effect on him. It was less marked than I had anticipated. The man seemed benumbed by accumulated torment and stared at the witnesses filing before him as if they were part of some wild phantasmagoria which confused, without enlightening him.
It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized.
Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental claims of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses.
In the dim light of the shaded lamp the figures on the Toile de Jouy danced incessantly before his eyes with an eerie effect; he felt himself enveloped in a phantasmagoria of which it was impossible to tell substance from shadow.
And in the midst of these phantasmagoria, which composed what Frank fondly styled, "making up his mind," there came a single man's elegant rat-tat-tat at the street door. "One never has a moment for thinking," cried Frank, and he called out to his valet, "Not at home." But it was too late. Lord Spendquick was in the hall, and presently within the room.
It certainly seemed probable that intelligence from the continent, which could easily have been transmitted by an active and powerful agent, might have enabled him to prepare such a scene of phantasmagoria as she had herself witnessed.
His best instrument of deception was the phantasmagoria; and as, by means of this abuse of the science of optics, he called up shades which were asked for, and almost always recognised, his correspondence with the other world was a thing proved by the concurrent testimony of numerous witnesses.
If they criticise actors and actresses, a huddled phantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, floods of light, and oceans of sound float before their morbid sense, which they paint in the style of Ancient Pistol. Not a glimpse can you get of the merits or defects of the performers: they are hidden in a profusion of barbarous epithets and wilful rhodomontade.
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