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The Alchemist - H. Lovecraft

The Alchemist

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Эта история, полная интриг и загадочности, рассказывается главным героем - Антуаном, комтом де С-, лично. Века тому назад Антуанов предок-знаток стал причиной гибели зловещего волшебника Мишеля Мове. Однако сын волшебника Шарль ле Сорсье поклялся отомстить не только ему, но и всем его потомкам, проклиная их на смерть в возрасте 32 лет.

Добавленная информация: Переплетены тонкие нити судьбы и магические заклинания, обрамляющие этот сказочный мир. Какова же тайна, скрывающаяся за проклятием, и сумеет ли Антуан разгадать ее загадку и спастись от предрекаемой смерти? Вместе с героем мы отправимся в опасное путешествие, полное приключений и магии, которое не оставит равнодушными ни одно сердце. Может быть, благодаря отваге и силе духа героя, проклятие будет разрушено, и наши надежды на спасение окажутся не напрасными. Вздохните глубже, готовьтесь к запутанному клубку загадок и непредсказуемых событий, ведь эта история держит внутри себя множество сюрпризов и секретов, ожидающих своего открытия. Блестящая детальность описаний, захватывающий поворот событий и неподдельная интрига - все это сделает ваше читательское путешествие незабываемым и оставит вас жаждущими продолжения. Мы не в состоянии оторваться от захватывающей истории, пока не узнаем, какие испытания и приключения ждут нашего героя. Станьте с ним на сторону света и смело вступайте в эту захватывающую сагу о борьбе с силами зла и вечной любви.

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The Alchemist

High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old château of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Comtes, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader.

But since those glorious years, all is changed. A poverty but little above the level of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another of the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate.

It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Comtes de C—, first saw the light of day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls and amongst the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and grottoes of the hillside below, were spent the first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been killed at the age of thirty – two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle. And my mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely upon one remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child and the lack of companionship which this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care exercised by my aged guardian, in excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose abodes were scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of the hill. At that time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me because my noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian company. Now I know that its real object was to keep from my ears the idle tales of the dread curse upon our line that were nightly told and magnified by the simple tenantry as they conversed in hushed accents in the glow of their cottage hearths.

Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted library of the château, and in roaming without aim or purpose through the perpetual dust of the spectral wood that clothes the side of the hill near its foot. It was perhaps an effect of such surroundings that my mind early acquired a shade of melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the dark and occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.

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