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thunderbolt and a man appeared in a column of glowing smoke, clad in a billowing cloak, with a mask of gold concealing his face.
    “Citizens of Vienna,” he cried. “For centuries, man has yearned to fathom the mystery of death, and plumb the secrets of that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns. Many have been the imposters who have claimed to communicate with the dead, but I stand before you now to make good that claim. Not by the wiles of necromancy will I achieve it, nor by the
legerdemain
of the magician, but by the genius of the scientist. I have created a machine which, for the first time in the history of mankind, may harness the hidden energy of the universe and breach the impermeable barrier of death.”
    He raised his arms then, as lightning suddenly illuminated the dank walls of the cavern. “Those of this company who desire to see again the faces of the departed, and hear the voices of those who were once dear, prepare yourselves, and hold fast to your courage, for you will see marvels to wring your hearts!”
    The room was plunged once more in darkness, and then, in a sudden ray of moonlight, we could see a young girl, clad—as I deduced—all in black, such that only her face was visible to us, afloat in a sea of utter dark. Before her there was mounted a brass apparatus of enormous complexity above which a glass ball appeared to be suspendedin the air. The room fell silent then, as she lifted hands as white as her face and placed them, one by one, on either side of the ball, whereupon the globe began to spin and a ghastly greenish light to glow at its heart.
    “Behold!” cried the man in a booming cadence, “as my daughter raises the secret flame, and summons the souls of the long-departed!”
    I do not believe there was one of us, then, in all that thronged and silent assembly but held their breath, as the girl lifted her face and closed her eyes, and we saw sparks kindled on the surface of the glass. Then there came, softly at first, the sound of a young woman’s voice, rising and falling as if in lamentation, and the whimpering of a little child. And then the light of the globe seemed to gather in strength, twisting into a plume above the girl’s head, and we all of us present gasped in terror and wonder as a woman’s face became visible in the emerald fire.
    An old fellow with grey hair rose tremblingly to his feet in the midst of the assemblage and cried in the quavering accents of age, “It is she, it is my Katharina. It is thirty years and more since she was lost to me.”
    Then he cast his face in his hands, openly weeping.
    And as the globe spun, the rising flame formed the contours of ghostly yearning faces, sighing and whispering from beyond the grave, and those about me cried out, one by one, starting from their seats in recognition, as they called the names of those they had once loved, and held out their hands in an ecstasy of grief.
    In short it was, as I hope to have conveyed, the most accomplished
phantasmagoria
I have ever yet beheld, and I commend it to readers of this newspaper who have not thus far had the opportunity to witness it for themselves. Professor de Caus is indeed a worthy successor to his late lamented mentor Monsieur Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, and more than justifies his claim to be “
Maker of Marvels, Worker of Wonders, and Conjuror of the Spirit Fire.
” Moreover, the wild rumours that have been circulating about Vienna as to the extraordinarytalents of his beautiful daughter will be amply vindicated by the sublimity of dread and wonder you will experience in her presence.
    But I counsel the utmost haste. The Professor will offer only a few last performances before returning, for a time, to his native England. We must hope his sojourn there will prove but short-lived.
    —Frederick Jager, “A Night at the Phantasmagoria,”
    Wiener Zeitung
, 5 January 1851

CHAPTER FOUR
 
     

Lucy’s journal
     
    V IENNA, 20 J ANUARY 1851
    W E ARE