<h2><SPAN name="chap61"></SPAN>The Magic Crystal</h2>
<p>If you had been a mystic or a soothsayer or a member of that mysterious world
which divines by incantations, dreams, the mystic bowl, or the crystal sphere,
you might have looked into their mysterious depths at this time and foreseen a
world of happenings which concerned these two, who were now apparently so
fortunately placed. In the fumes of the witches’ pot, or the depths of
the radiant crystal, might have been revealed cities, cities, cities; a world
of mansions, carriages, jewels, beauty; a vast metropolis outraged by the power
of one man; a great state seething with indignation over a force it could not
control; vast halls of priceless pictures; a palace unrivaled for its
magnificence; a whole world reading with wonder, at times, of a given name. And
sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.</p>
<p>The three witches that hailed Macbeth upon the blasted heath might in turn have
called to Cowperwood, “Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master of a great
railway system! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, builder of a priceless mansion!
Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, patron of arts and possessor of endless riches!
You shall be famed hereafter.” But like the Weird Sisters, they would
have lied, for in the glory was also the ashes of Dead Sea fruit—an
understanding that could neither be inflamed by desire nor satisfied by luxury;
a heart that was long since wearied by experience; a soul that was as bereft of
illusion as a windless moon. And to Aileen, as to Macduff, they might have
spoken a more pathetic promise, one that concerned hope and failure. To have
and not to have! All the seeming, and yet the sorrow of not having! Brilliant
society that shone in a mirage, yet locked its doors; love that eluded as a
will-o’-the-wisp and died in the dark. “Hail to you, Frank
Cowperwood, master and no master, prince of a world of dreams whose reality was
disillusion!” So might the witches have called, the bowl have danced with
figures, the fumes with vision, and it would have been true. What wise man
might not read from such a beginning, such an end?</p>
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