The person whom he had now encountered was the physician , Dr. Clarke , the duties of whose sad profession had led him to the province-house , where he was an infrequent guest in more prosperous times . `` Young man , what is your purpose ? '' demanded he . `` I seek the Lady Eleanore , '' answered Jervase Helwyse , submissively . `` All have fled from her , '' said the physician . `` Why do you seek her now ? I tell you , youth , her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of that fatal chamber . Know ye not that never came such a curse to our shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore , that her breath has filled the air with poison , that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land from the folds of her accursed mantle ? '' `` Let me look upon her , '' rejoined the mad youth , more wildly . `` Let me behold her in her awful beauty , clad in the regal garments of the pestilence . She and Death sit on a throne together ; let me kneel down before them . '' `` Poor youth ! '' said Dr. Clarke , and , moved by a deep sense of human weakness , a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then . `` Wilt thou still worship the destroyer and surround her image with fantasies the more magnificent the more evil she has wrought ? Thus man doth ever to his tyrants . Approach , then . Madness , as I have noted , has that good efficacy that it will guard you from contagion , and perhaps its own cure may be found in yonder chamber . '' Ascending another flight of stairs , he threw open a door and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should enter . The poor lunatic , it seems probable , had cherished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in state , unharmed herself by the pestilential influence which as by enchantment she scattered round about her . He dreamed , no doubt , that her beauty was not dimmed , but brightened into superhuman splendor .
With such anticipations he stole reverentially to the door at which the physician stood , but paused upon the threshold , gazing fearfully XXXXX the gloom of the darkened chamber .
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