At the end of the 19th century, the Smolensk nobleman M. P. Gedeonov accidentally found out that in Apolye, the abandoned estate of the once famous princes Drutsky-Sokolinsky, there is a black mirror that had some kind of magical properties.
Being an inquisitive man and a lover of all sorts of antiquities, Gedeonov first rummaged through rare books. And that's what I found out.
For the first time, black mirrors were mentioned in the middle of the sixteenth century in the life of the alchemist Christopher Wagner. This alchemist allegedly made several of these mirrors, scrupulously observing the technology, the secret of which was found somewhere in the East. In the biography of the alchemist, it was reported that the mirrors allegedly showed the past and the future, and also reproduced the events taking place even far away.
One of these mirrors came to the Polish warlock Jan Twardowski. And then, most likely, it passed from him into the hands of the princes Drutsky-Sokolinsky.
Interested Gedeonov went to Apolle. The estate, it turns out, has been empty for a long time. The old manager, who is also a watchman, took the guest into a small hall and, pushing aside the velvet curtain, opened a square mirror with a dull, as it were, a tin surface.
“Here below, if you please have a look, there are cracks,” he said. - This is from the blow of a fist, not of someone, but of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte himself. When he went with a myriad army to Moscow, he deigned to spend the night with the late Prince Yakov. They say that the mirror showed Napoleon his complete defeat and flight from Russia - well, he hit the glass out of excess of feelings … Let me warn you too, your honor, do not come close to the accursed glass, no matter how bad it turns out!
- What could happen? - asked Gedeonov.
- Many things. Fifteen years ago, one master glued tapestries here. And something didn’t come out for a long time. They looked in - and he was lying on the floor unconscious. They took him out into the fresh air, barely brought him to his senses. I looked, he says, in the mirror, and from there the human arm stretched out - and nailed me to the floor.
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“You say that I glued the tapestries…” Gedeonov said thoughtfully.
- Tapestries, that's right, sir! Because before that there was a fire in the hall. Somehow I forgot to draw the curtain on the mirror. And imagine: before my eyes, a kind of crimson ray suddenly bursts out of the mirror - and well, rummage around the hall. There the curtain broke out, here curtains, tapestries. Glory to the Almighty, the fire was quickly extinguished.
Ruins of the Drutsky-Sokolinsky estate in the village of Apolye (Smolensk region). Photo yaglis.livejournal.com
- Well, my dear, we will also test the mirror, - said Gedeonov quietly and, coming up close, looked into it.
The entire hall was reflected there: chandeliers, a card table, paintings, furniture covered from dust with covers. There was only … Gedeonov himself, no matter how much he peered! He got goosebumps. Meanwhile the mirror began to darken, to fill with blackness, like a slate board. Gedeonov recoiled in horror and convulsively drew the curtain.
“They also say that the late Prince Yakov,” the old man’s voice came to him, as it were from the other world, “saw himself in the mirror in his youth, but already in his old years. And since that time I never looked again - I was afraid of something … And how not to be afraid, when here it was not without the intervention of the devil, the eternal enemy of the human race!
Having generously gifted the old man, Gedeonov left the estate, and in the evening of the same day he described everything that had happened in his travel book.
In 1918, the peasants plundered the estate clean, and the black mirror sank into oblivion.