Free The Chateau d'Argol by Julien Gracq

Enigma, whose inextricable knots had been stifling him since morning with an embrace at every instant more convincing—so that in the middle of his journey toward the altar he stopped abruptly, a prey to a sudden terror lest his enchanted footsteps, if they continued, should bring him face to face with its disconcerting and incontestable countenance.
    Strange parallels, and not so much those of resemblance as those, in every respect more curious, of Analogy, all tending to imply that this visit, so altogether baffling, had not indeed been directed toward a chapel lost in the forest, but really toward some castle enchanted by the menace of the equivocal arms of the Fisher King, made a sudden ineffaceable inroad on his brain. The sun's rays shining down onto the middle of the empty and desolate altar, the sound of the heavy drops of water on the flagstones, the damp obscurity of the place, the song of the bird through the breach in the vault shriller than if it had burst inside the ear itself and as though fraught with an inexplicable and delirious hope, the regular ticking of the iron clock—all filled his soul with glorious and melancholy visions, exhausted it with an imperious and devastating suspense that rising, little by little, with the trills of the bird to a supreme point where it attained the consuming ardour of fire, in its vigorous plenitude wrung tears from the eyes no less than might the sound of the most sumptuous brass instruments. And perhaps it was not perceptible to him in the midst of his tumultuous agitation, how much higher than all the voices of nature resounded here with a dissonant clamour the glaring disappropriation of all things—of the altar all the more majestic for being abandoned, of the useless lance, of the tomb as perturbing as a cenotaph, of the clock ticking for nothing outside of time, on which its gears had no more grip than a mill-wheel in a dried-up stream, of the lamp burning in full daylight, of the windows palpably made to be looked into from outside , and against which were glued all the green tentacles of the forest.
    Then out of the depth of his disquietude there rose a sound that seemed instantly to fill the whole chapel and stream down the glistening walls, and without daring to turn around, so stunned was he by its inconceivable amplitude, he now realized that during his own silent exploration of the chapel, Herminien had mounted the stone steps of the organ loft which rose in the darkness to the left of the door, occupying a considerable portion of the chapel, but which, his own attention having been at once captured by the alluring light effect, had escaped his notice until now. Herminien's playing was stamped with a singular force, and such was his expressive power that Albert, as though he could read in the depths of his soul, divined each succeeding theme of this wild improvisation. At first it seemed that Herminien, with dissonant and tentative gropings, interrupted by reiterations and regressions in which the principal motif was repeatedly taken up in a more timid and, as it were, interrogative mode, was only trying out the volume and acoustical capacity of this perturbing edifice. And now burst forth waves of sound, as violent as the forest and free as the winds of the heights, and the storm which Albert had contemplated with such horror from the high terraces of the castle thundered out of those mystic depths, while above them sounds of a crystalline purity fell, one by one, in a surprising and hesitating decrescendo , and floated like a sonorous vapour shot with flashes of yellow sunlight, curiously following the rhythm of the drops of water that were dripping from the vault.
    After these effects of nature came an access of violent, sensual passion, and with perfect fidelity the organist painted his savage frenzy: like a luminous mist Heide floated on high, vanished, returned, and finally established her empire over melodic swells, of an extraordinary amplitude that