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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Diamond Lens
+
+Author: Fitz-James O'brien
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23169]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIAMOND LENS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DIAMOND LENS
+
+By Fitz-James O'brien
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations
+had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than
+ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my
+inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a
+disk of copper a small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained
+by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some
+fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect
+forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a
+preternatural state of excitement.
+
+Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to
+me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to
+me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency,
+and ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately
+on his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes
+that intervened between that promise and his departure.
+
+Meantime, I was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the
+remotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employed
+in vain attempts to realize that instrument the theory of whose
+construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of
+glass containing those oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as
+"bull's-eyes" were ruthlessly destroyed in the hope of obtaining lenses
+of marvelous power. I even went so far as to extract the crystalline
+humor from the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored to press
+it into the microscopic service. I plead guilty to having stolen the
+glasses from my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with a dim idea of grinding
+them into lenses of wondrous magnifying properties--in which attempt it
+is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.
+
+At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order known as
+Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars.
+As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not
+have been selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on the
+microscope--its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then for
+the first time the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dull veil of
+ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to
+roll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt toward my
+companions as the seer might feel toward the ordinary masses of men.
+I held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could not
+understand. I was in daily communication with living wonders such as
+they never imagined in their wildest visions, I penetrated beyond the
+external portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries. Where
+they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass,
+I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to
+physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as
+fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould,
+which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped
+away from her jam-pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew,
+enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage
+and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these
+microscopic forests hung strange fruits glittering with green and silver
+and gold.
+
+It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was the
+pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed.
+I talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my microscope, I
+dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, poring over the
+marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who, having discovered
+the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should
+resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret
+of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment. I destined
+myself to be a microscopist.
+
+Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was
+ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellects engaged in the
+same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand
+times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek, Williamson,
+Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schultz, Dujardin, Schact, and Schleiden were then
+entirely unknown to me, or, if known, I was ignorant of their patient
+and wonderful researches. In every fresh specimen of cryptogamia which
+I placed beneath my instrument I believed that I discovered wonders
+of which the world was as yet ignorant. I remember well the thrill
+of delight and admiration that shot through me the first time that I
+discovered the common wheel animalcule (Rotifera vulgaris) expanding
+and contracting its flexible spokes and seemingly rotating through the
+water. Alas! as I grew older, and obtained some works treating of my
+favorite study, I found that I was only on the threshold of a science
+to the investigation of which some of the greatest men of the age were
+devoting their lives and intellects.
+
+As I grew up, my parents, who saw but little likelihood of anything
+practical resulting from the examination of bits of moss and drops of
+water through a brass tube and a piece of glass, were anxious that I
+should choose a profession.
+
+It was their desire that I should enter the counting-house of my uncle,
+Ethan Blake, a prosperous merchant, who carried on business in New
+York. This suggestion I decisively combated. I had no taste for trade; I
+should only make a failure; in short, I refused to become a merchant.
+
+But it was necessary for me to select some pursuit. My parents were
+staid New England people, who insisted on the necessity of labor, and
+therefore, although, thanks to the bequest of my poor Aunt Agatha, I
+should, on coming of age, inherit a small fortune sufficient to place me
+above want, it was decided that, instead of waiting for this, I should
+act the nobler part, and employ the intervening years in rendering
+myself independent.
+
+After much cogitation, I complied with the wishes of my family, and
+selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York
+Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my
+relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased without
+fear of detection. As long as I paid my Academy fees, I might shirk
+attending the lectures if I chose; and, as I never had the remotest
+intention of standing an examination, there was no danger of my being
+"plucked." Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could
+obtain excellent instruments, the newest publications, intimacy with
+men of pursuits kindred with my own--in short, all things necessary to
+ensure a profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an
+abundance of money, few desires that were not bounded by my illuminating
+mirror on one side and my object-glass on the other; what, therefore,
+was to prevent my becoming an illustrious investigator of the veiled
+worlds? It was with the most buoyant hope that I left my New England
+home and established myself in New York.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
+obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very
+pretty second floor, unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom,
+and a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I
+furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted
+all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited
+Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his splendid
+collection of microscopes--Field's Compound, Hingham's, Spencer's,
+Nachet's Binocular (that founded on the principles of the stereoscope),
+and at length fixed upon that form known as Spencer's Trunnion
+Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an
+almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased
+every possible accessory--draw-tubes, micrometers, a _camera lucida_,
+lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms,
+parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes,
+fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have
+been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I
+afterward discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It
+takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The
+optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these valuable purchases.
+He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific
+celebrity or a madman. I think he was inclined to the latter belief. I
+suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which
+he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a
+lunatic.
+
+Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific
+students have ever equaled. I had everything to learn relative to the
+delicate study upon which I had embarked--a study involving the most
+earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand,
+the most untiring eye, the most refined and subtle manipulation.
+
+For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of
+my laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every possible
+contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was that I did
+not know how to use some of my scientific implements--never having been
+taught microscopies--and those whose use I understood theoretically were
+of little avail until by practice I could attain the necessary delicacy
+of handling. Still, such was the fury of my ambition, such the untiring
+perseverance of my experiments, that, difficult of credit as it may
+be, in the course of one year I became theoretically and practically an
+accomplished microscopist.
+
+During this period of my labors, in which I submitted specimens of every
+substance that came under my observation to the action of my lenses, I
+became a discoverer--in a small way, it is true, for I was very young,
+but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's theory that
+the _Volvox globator_ was an animal, and proved that his "monads" with
+stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of a vegetable
+cell, and were, when they reached their mature state, incapable of
+the act of conjugation, or any true generative act, without which no
+organism rising to any stage of life higher than vegetable can be said
+to be complete. It was I who resolved the singular problem of rotation
+in the cells and hairs of plants into ciliary attraction, in spite of
+the assertions of Wenham and others that my explanation was the result
+of an optical illusion.
+
+But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made
+as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found
+myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active
+microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common
+complaint against many such that they supply the defects of their
+instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths beyond
+depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from
+exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary micro-scopes
+of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the
+envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those
+imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to
+use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose
+magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the
+object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and
+chromatic aberrations--in short, from all the obstacles over which the
+poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced
+that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet
+perfect power, was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the
+compound microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the
+wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor
+to remedy those very defects of the simplest instrument which, if
+conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.
+
+It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist.
+After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every
+imaginable substance--glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial crystals
+formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials--in short, having
+constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes--I found
+myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an extensive
+knowledge of glass-making. I was almost dead with despair. My parents
+were surprised at my apparent want of progress in my medical studies
+(I had not attended one lecture since my arrival in the city), and the
+expenses of my mad pursuit had been so great as to embarrass me very
+seriously.
+
+I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory on
+a small diamond--that stone, from its great refracting power, having
+always occupied my attention more than any other--when a young
+Frenchman who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the habit of
+occasionally visiting me, entered the room.
+
+I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew
+character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There was
+something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell, and yet
+went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should perhaps have said
+peddle; for his operations were generally confined to the disposal of
+single articles--a picture, for instance, or a rare carving in ivory, or
+a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress of a Mexican _caballero_. When
+I was first furnishing my rooms, he paid me a visit, which ended in my
+purchasing an antique silver lamp, which he assured me was a Cellini--it
+was handsome enough even for that--and some other knick-knacks for my
+sitting-room. Why Simon should pursue this petty trade I never could
+imagine. He apparently had plenty of money, and had the _entrée_ of the
+best houses in the city--taking care, however, I suppose, to drive no
+bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at length
+to the conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some
+greater object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance
+to be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was none of my
+affair.
+
+On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of
+considerable excitement.
+
+"_Ah! mon ami!_" he cried, before I could even offer him the ordinary
+salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the most
+astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the house of
+Madame ------. How does the little animal--_le renard_--name himself in
+the Latin?"
+
+"Vulpes," I answered.
+
+"Ah! yes--Vulpes. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulpes."
+
+"The spirit medium?"
+
+"Yes, the great medium. Great heavens! what a woman! I write on a
+slip of paper many of questions concerning affairs of the most
+secret--affairs that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the
+most profound; and behold, by example, what occurs? This devil of a
+woman makes me replies the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me
+of things that I do not love to talk of to myself. What am I to think? I
+am fixed to the earth!"
+
+"Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulpes replied to
+questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events
+known only to yourself?"
+
+"Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of some
+alarm. "She related to me things--But," he added after a pause, and
+suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with these follies?
+It was all the biology, without doubt. It goes without saying that it
+has not my credence. But why are we here, _mon ami?_ It has occurred to
+me to discover the most beautiful thing as you can imagine--a vase with
+green lizards on it, composed by the great Bernard Palissy. It is in my
+apartment; let us mount. I go to show it to you."
+
+I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy and
+his enameled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark a great
+discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes,
+set me on a new track. What if, through communication with more subtle
+organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal which
+perhaps a life, of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to
+attain?
+
+While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was mentally
+arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the
+promise of an ample fee, I found Madame Vulpes awaiting me at her
+residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with keen and rather
+cruel dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth
+and under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on
+the ground floor, very sparsely furnished. In the centre of the room,
+close to where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany table.
+If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could
+not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt
+to inspire the visitor with awe. Everything bore a simple and practical
+aspect. This intercourse with the spiritual world was evidently as
+familiar an occupation with Mrs. Vulpes as eating her dinner or riding
+in an omnibus.
+
+"You come for a communication, Mr. Linley?" said the medium, in a dry,
+businesslike tone of voice.
+
+"By appointment--yes."
+
+"What sort of communication do you want--a written one?"
+
+"Yes, I wish for a written one."
+
+"From any particular spirit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you ever known this spirit on this earth?"
+
+"Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from
+him some information which he ought to be able to give better than any
+other."
+
+"Will you seat yourself at the table, Mr. Lin-ley," said the medium,
+"and place your hands upon it?"
+
+I obeyed, Mrs. Vulpes being seated opposite to me, with her hands also
+on the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half, when a
+violent succession of raps came on the table, on the back of my chair,
+on the floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window-panes.
+Mrs. Vulpes smiled composedly.
+
+"They are very strong to-night," she remarked. "You are fortunate." She
+then continued, "Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?"
+
+Vigorous affirmative.
+
+"Will the particular spirit he desires to speak with communicate?"
+
+A very confused rapping followed this question.
+
+"I know what they mean," said Mrs. Vulpes, addressing herself to me;
+"they wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that
+you desire to converse with. Is that so?" she added, speaking to her
+invisible guests.
+
+That it was so was evident from the numerous affirmatory responses.
+While this was going on, I tore a slip from my pocket-book and scribbled
+a name under the table.
+
+"Will this spirit communicate in writing with this gentleman?" asked the
+medium once more.
+
+After a moment's pause, her hand seemed to be seized with a violent
+tremor, shaking so forcibly that the table vibrated. She said that a
+spirit had seized her hand and would write. I handed her some sheets of
+paper that were on the table and a pencil. The latter she held loosely
+in her hand, which presently began to move over the paper with a
+singular and seemingly involuntary motion. After a few moments had
+elapsed, she handed me the paper, on which I found written, in a large,
+uncultivated hand, the words, "He is not here, but has been sent for."
+A pause of a minute or so ensued, during which Mrs. Vulpes remained
+perfectly silent, but the raps continued at regular intervals. When the
+short period I mention had elapsed, the hand of the medium was again
+seized with its convulsive tremor, and she wrote, under this strange
+influence, a few words on the paper, which she handed to me. They were
+as follows:
+
+"I am here. Question me.
+
+"_Leeuwenhoek_."
+
+I was astounded. The name was identical with that I had written beneath
+the table, and carefully kept concealed. Neither was it at all probable
+that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Vulpes should know even the name
+of the great father of microscopies. It may have been biology; but
+this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip--still
+concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes--a series of questions which, to avoid
+tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the order in which
+they occurred:
+
+I.--Can the microscope be brought to perfection?
+
+Spirit--Yes.
+
+I.--Am I destined to accomplish this great task?
+
+Spirit.--You are.
+
+I.--I wish to know how to proceed to attain this end. For the love which
+you bear to science, help me!
+
+Spirit--A diamond of one hundred and forty carats, submitted to
+electro-magnetic currents for a long period, will experience a
+rearrangement of its atoms _inter se_ and from that stone you will form
+the universal lens.
+
+I.--Will great discoveries result from the use of such a lens?
+
+Spirit--So great that all that has gone before is as nothing.
+
+I.--But the refractive power of the diamond is so immense that the image
+will be formed within the lens. How is that difficulty to be surmounted?
+
+Spirit--Pierce the lens through its axis, and the difficulty is
+obviated. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will
+itself serve as a tube to look through. Now I am called. Good-night.
+
+I can not at all describe the effect that these extraordinary
+communications had upon me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological
+theory could account for the _discovery_ of the lens. The medium might,
+by means of biological _rapport_ with my mind, have gone so far as to
+read my questions and reply to them coherently. But biology could
+not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the
+crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects and admit of
+its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have
+passed through my head, it is true; but if so, I had forgotten it. In
+my excited condition of mind there was no course left but to become a
+convert, and it was in a state of the most painful nervous exaltation
+that I left the medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to
+the door, hoping that I was satisfied. The raps followed us as we went
+through the hall, sounding on the balusters, the flooring, and even the
+lintels of the door. I hastily expressed my satisfaction, and escaped
+hurriedly into the cool night air. I walked home with but one thought
+possessing me--how to obtain a diamond of the immense size required. My
+entire means multiplied a hundred times over would have been inadequate
+to its purchase. Besides, such stones are rare, and become historical. I
+could find such only in the regalia of Eastern or European monarchs.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague
+impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room
+unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a Carcel
+lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held
+in his hands. As I entered, he started suddenly, thrust his hand into
+his breast pocket, and turned to me with a face crimson with confusion.
+
+"What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well,
+don't blush so much; I won't ask to see it."
+
+Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative
+protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.
+
+"Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."
+
+This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as
+if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent
+words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his
+liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with
+my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.
+
+"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I
+continued. "Simon, she told me wonderful things to-night, or rather
+was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a
+diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"
+
+Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my lips
+when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me savagely, and,
+rushing to the mantelpiece, where some foreign weapons hung on the wall,
+caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it furiously before him.
+
+"No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited. "No!
+you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted with that
+demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me, I am brave! You
+can not make me fear!"
+
+All this, uttered in a loud voice, trembling with excitement, astounded
+me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon the edges of
+Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to reassure him.
+
+"My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you mean.
+I went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific problem,
+to the solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the size I just
+mentioned was necessary. You were never alluded to during the evening,
+nor, so far as I was concerned, even thought of. What can be the meaning
+of this outburst? If you happen to have a set of valuable diamonds in
+your possession, you need fear nothing from me. The diamond which I
+require you could not possess; or, if you did possess it, you would not
+be living here."
+
+Something in my tone must have completely reassured him, for his
+expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment,
+combined however, with a certain suspicious attention to my movements.
+He laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he was at certain
+moments subject to a species of vertigo, which betrayed itself in
+incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed off as rapidly as they
+came.
+
+He put his weapon aside while making this explanation, and endeavored,
+with some success, to assume a more cheerful air.
+
+All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed
+to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to
+probe the mystery to the bottom.
+
+"Simon," I said gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of
+Burgundy. I have a case of Lausseure's _Clos Vougeot_ downstairs,
+fragrant with the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Côte d'Or.
+Let us have up a couple of bottles. What say you?"
+
+"With all my heart," answered Simon smilingly.
+
+I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous
+vintage, that of 1848, a year when war and wine throve together, and its
+pure but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system.
+By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which
+I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as
+ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through
+my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to
+singing French _chansons_ of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly
+from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses,
+and, fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said, "Simon, I have
+deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. You may as well be
+frank with me. Mrs. Vulpes--or rather, one of her spirits--told me all."
+
+He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to fade
+away, and he made a movement toward the weapon that he had a short time
+before laid down, I stopped him with my hand.
+
+"Monster!" he cried passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You
+shall never have it! I swear by my mother!"
+
+"I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell me
+all about it."
+
+The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness
+that I was entirely mistaken--that I was intoxicated; then asked me to
+swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I
+pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and
+hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his
+breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamplight was shivered into
+a thousand prismatic arrows as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that
+glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance
+that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with
+wonder and--must I confess it?--with envy. How could he have obtained
+this treasure? In reply to my questions, I could just gather from
+his drunken statements (of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was
+affected) that he had been superintending a gang of slaves engaged
+in diamond-washing in Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a
+diamond, but, instead of informing his employers, had quietly watched
+the negro until he saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up and
+fled with it, but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of
+it publicly--so valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too
+much attention to its owner's antecedents--and he had not been able
+to discover any of those obscure channels by which such matters are
+conveyed away safely. He added that, in accordance with oriental
+practice, he had named his diamond with the fanciful title of "The Eye
+of Morning."
+
+While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond
+attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories
+of light ever imagined or described seemed to pulsate in its crystalline
+chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred
+and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of destiny
+seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek
+communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless
+means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I
+determined, with the most perfect deliberation, to possess myself of
+Simon's diamond.
+
+I sat opposite to him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly
+revolved the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so
+foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered,
+or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must
+interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be
+taken--to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a little peddling
+Jew in comparison with the interests of science? Human beings are taken
+every day from the condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons.
+This man, Simon, was by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I
+believed on my soul a murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any
+felon condemned by the laws: why should I not, like government,
+contrive that his punishment should contribute to the progress of human
+knowledge?
+
+The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach.
+There stood upon the mantelpiece a bottle half full of French laudanum.
+Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just restored to
+him, that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his glass. In a
+quarter of an hour he was in a profound sleep.
+
+I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket in
+which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I laid him
+so that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed myself of
+the Malay creese, which I held in my right hand, while with the other I
+discovered as accurately as I could by pulsation the exact locality of
+the heart. It was essential that all the aspects of his death should
+lead to the surmise of self-murder. I calculated the exact angle at
+which it was probable that the weapon, if leveled by Simon's own hand,
+would enter his breast; then with one powerful blow I thrust it up to
+the hilt in the very spot which I desired to penetrate. A convulsive
+thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I heard a smothered sound issue from
+his throat, precisely like the bursting of a large air-bubble sent up by
+a diver when it reaches the surface of the water; he turned half round
+on his side, and, as if to assist my plans more effectually, his right
+hand, moved by some mere spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the
+creese, which it remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity.
+Beyond this there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume,
+paralyzed the usual nervous action. He must have died instantly.
+
+There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all
+suspicion of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the house
+to Simon himself, it was necessary that the door should be found in the
+morning _locked on the in-side_. How to do this, and afterward escape
+myself? Not by the window; that was a physical impossibility. Besides,
+I was determined that the windows _also_ should be found bolted. The
+solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for
+a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery
+substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was
+nothing more than a long, slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip
+and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the
+shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the
+lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vise, through the keyhole,
+from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing
+this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost
+always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some
+more laudanum into Simon's glass--having first removed from it all
+traces of wine--cleaned the other wine-glass, and brought the bottles
+away with me. If traces of two persons drinking had been found in the
+room, the question naturally would have arisen, Who was the second?
+Besides, the wine-bottles might have been identified as belonging to me.
+The laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in his stomach, in
+case of a _post-mortem_ examination. The theory naturally would be that
+he first intended to poison himself, but, after swallowing a little of
+the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or changed his mind from
+other motives, and chose the dagger. These arrangements made, I walked
+out, leaving the gas burning, locked the door with my vise, and went to
+bed.
+
+Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon.
+The servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning--the light streaming
+on the dark landing from under the door--peeped through the keyhole and
+saw Simon on the bed.
+
+She gave the alarm. The door was burst open, and the neighborhood was in
+a fever of excitement.
+
+Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an
+inquest; but no clew to his death beyond that of suicide could be
+obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends
+the preceding week that seemed to point to self-destruction. One
+gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired
+of life." His landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last
+month's rent, remarked that "he should not pay him rent much longer."
+All the other evidence corresponded--the door locked inside, the
+position of the corpse, the burned papers. As I anticipated, no one
+knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was
+suggested for his murder. The jury, after a prolonged examination,
+brought in the usual verdict, and the neighborhood once more settled
+down to its accustomed quiet.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The three months succeeding Simon's catastrophe I devoted night and day
+to my diamond lens. I had constructed a vast galvanic battery, composed
+of nearly two thousand pairs of plates: a higher power I dared not use,
+lest the diamond should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine
+I was enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually
+through my great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every
+day. At the expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing
+of the lens, a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great
+density of the stone, and the care required to be taken with the
+curvatures of the surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest
+and most harassing that I had yet undergone.
+
+At last the eventful moment came; the lens was completed. I stood
+trembling on the threshold of new worlds. I had the realization of
+Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to
+be placed upon its platform. My hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop
+of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to
+its examination, a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid
+evaporation of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass
+under the lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and
+a mirror, a powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute
+hole drilled through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing
+save what seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast, luminous abyss. A
+pure white light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space
+itself, was my first impression. Gently, and with the greatest care, I
+depressed the lens a few hairbreadths. The wondrous illumination
+still continued, but as the lens approached the object a scene of
+indescribable beauty was unfolded to my view.
+
+I seemed to gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far
+beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the
+entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous
+life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse.
+I comprehended instantly that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had
+penetrated beyond the grosser particles of aqueous matter, beyond the
+realms of infusoria and protozoa, down to the original gaseous globule,
+into whose luminous interior I was gazing as into an almost boundless
+dome filled with a supernatural radiance.
+
+It was, however, no brilliant void into which I looked. On every side I
+beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with
+the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what
+might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds
+of the highest rarity--that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable
+formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the
+gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away
+into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous
+forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of
+unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid
+glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of
+many-colored drooping silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or
+flowers, pied with a thousand hues, lustrous and ever-varying, bubbled
+from the crowns of this fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers,
+no forms animate or inanimate, were to be seen, save those vast auroral
+copses that floated serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and
+fruits and flowers gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere
+imagination.
+
+How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned to
+solitude! I had hoped, at least, to discover some new form of animal
+life, perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at present
+acquainted, but still some living organism. I found my newly discovered
+world, if I may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.
+
+While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal
+economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms our
+most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through
+the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more attentively,
+and found that I was not mistaken. Words can not depict the anxiety with
+which I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it
+merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated
+atmosphere of the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality
+and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of
+cloud-foliage, for seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the
+violet pennons that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently
+pushed aside, and the form floated out into the broad light.
+
+It was a female human shape. When I say human, I mean it possessed the
+outlines of humanity; but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty
+lifted it illimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.
+
+I can not, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine
+revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and
+serene, evade my words. Her long, lustrous hair following her glorious
+head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star,
+seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the
+bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely
+the wondrous harmonies of outline that inclosed her form.
+
+She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into
+the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some
+graceful naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear,
+unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth
+with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still
+atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed
+suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual
+symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines.
+This, indeed was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared
+I if I had waded to the portal of this wonder through another's blood.
+I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and
+delight.
+
+Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an
+instant of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the
+microscope eagerly. Alas! as my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay
+beneath my instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism
+sparkled on a colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew,
+this beautiful being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not
+more distant from me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to
+the microscope.
+
+Animula (let me now call her by that dear name which I subsequently
+bestowed on her) had changed her position. She had again approached the
+wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upward. Presently one of the
+trees--as I must call them--unfolded a long ciliary process, with which
+it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and,
+sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took
+it in her delicate hand and began to eat. My attention was so entirely
+absorbed by her that I could not apply myself to the task of determining
+whether this singular plant was or was not instinct with volition.
+
+I watched her, as she made her repast, with the most profound attention.
+The suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame;
+my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of
+the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the
+power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean and float with her
+through those grooves of purple and gold! While I was thus breathlessly
+following her every movement, she suddenly started, seemed to listen
+for a moment, and then cleaving the brilliant ether in which she was
+floating, like a flash of light, pierced through the opaline forest and
+disappeared.
+
+Instantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It
+seemed as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still
+before me, but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden
+disappearance? Had she a lover or a husband? Yes, that was the solution!
+Some signal from a happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues
+of the forest, and she had obeyed the summons.
+
+The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled
+me. I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I
+battled against the fatal conclusion--but in vain. It was so. I had no
+escape from it. I loved an animalcule.
+
+It is true that, thanks to the marvelous power of my microscope, she
+appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting
+aspect of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in
+the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and
+delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that?
+Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument it fell on a
+miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt
+all that could make my life lovely.
+
+Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical
+walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that
+filled my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life
+with the knowledge of her remote sympathy.
+
+It would be something to have established even the faintest personal
+link to bind us together--to know that at times, when roaming through
+these enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger who
+had broken the monotony of her life with his presence and left a gentle
+memory in her heart!
+
+But it could not be. No invention of which human intellect was capable
+could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast my
+soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant
+of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when
+closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from
+the room, and flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
+microscope, I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that
+contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded
+by its moderators, burning when I went to bed the night before. I found
+the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of pleasure animating
+her features, in the brilliant light which surrounded her. She tossed
+her lustrous golden hair over her shoulders with innocent coquetry. She
+lay at full length in the transparent medium, in which she supported
+herself with ease, and gamboled with the enchanting grace that the nymph
+Salmacis might have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest
+Hermaphroditus. I tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of
+reflection were developed. I lessened the lamplight considerably. By the
+dim light that remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across
+her face. She looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I
+flooded the stage of the microscope again with a full stream of light,
+and her whole expression changed. She sprang forward like some some
+substance deprived of all weight. Her eyes sparkled and her lips moved.
+Ah! if science had only the means of conducting and reduplicating
+sounds, as it does rays of light, what carols of happiness would then
+have entranced my ears! what jubilant hymns to Adonais would have
+thrilled the illumined air!
+
+I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Cabalis peopled his
+mystic world with sylphs-beautiful beings whose breath of life was
+lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
+purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had
+practically realized.
+
+How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely
+know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into the
+night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw
+no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my
+meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of
+any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form
+strengthened my passion--a passion that was always overshadowed by the
+maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she
+never, never could behold me!
+
+At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest and continual
+brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I determined
+to make some effort to wean myself from it. "Come," I said, "this is
+at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms
+which in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from female society has
+produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her with the beautiful
+women of your own world, and this false enchantment will vanish."
+
+I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the advertisement
+of a celebrated _danseuse_ who appeared nightly at Niblo's. The
+Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most beautiful as
+well as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly dressed and
+went to the theatre.
+
+The curtain drew up. The usual semicircle of fairies in white muslin
+were standing on the right toe around the enameled flower-bank of green
+canvas, on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a flute is
+heard. The fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all stand on
+the left toe, and the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She bounded
+forward amid thunders of applause, and, lighting on one foot, remained
+poised in the air. Heavens! was this the great enchantress that had
+drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels? Those heavy, muscular limbs,
+those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those
+crudely painted cheeks! Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid,
+expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of Animula?
+
+The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of
+her limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic
+efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it
+no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me,
+I rose from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina's
+_pas-de-fascination_ and abruptly quitted the house.
+
+I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of
+my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be
+impossible. I applied my eyes to the lens. Animula was there--but what
+could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place
+during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features
+of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs
+trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She
+was ill--ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I
+would have forfeited all claims to my human birthright if I could only
+have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console
+her from whom fate had forever divided me.
+
+I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that
+afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features
+contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The
+wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their
+hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched
+Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to
+wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not
+looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it;
+for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself.
+I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was
+still there--but, great heavens, the water drop had vanished! The awful
+truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute
+as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom,
+the one that contained Animula--and she was dying!
+
+I rushed again to the front of the lens and looked through. Alas! the
+last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away,
+and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim
+light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely
+shriveling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes that shone like
+heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now
+lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle
+of the blackening form--and I fainted.
+
+When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
+the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it.
+I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for many months.
+
+They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have
+neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I
+live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to
+lecture on optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me
+while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I
+suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense
+when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon
+among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-james O'brien
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Diamond Lens
+
+Author: Fitz-James O'brien
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23169]
+Last Updated: February 4, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIAMOND LENS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE DIAMOND LENS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Fitz-James O'brien
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had
+      been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years
+      old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience,
+      constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a disk of copper a
+      small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary
+      attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty
+      diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but
+      still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural
+      state of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to me
+      all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to me a
+      few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency, and
+      ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately on
+      his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes that
+      intervened between that promise and his departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, I was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the
+      remotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employed in vain
+      attempts to realize that instrument the theory of whose construction I as
+      yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of glass containing those oblate
+      spheroidal knots familiarly known as "bull's-eyes" were ruthlessly
+      destroyed in the hope of obtaining lenses of marvelous power. I even went
+      so far as to extract the crystalline humor from the eyes of fishes and
+      animals, and endeavored to press it into the microscopic service. I plead
+      guilty to having stolen the glasses from my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with
+      a dim idea of grinding them into lenses of wondrous magnifying properties&mdash;in
+      which attempt it is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order known as
+      Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars. As
+      far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not have been
+      selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on the microscope&mdash;its
+      history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then for the first time the
+      "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dull veil of ordinary existence that
+      hung across the world seemed suddenly to roll away, and to lay bare a land
+      of enchantments. I felt toward my companions as the seer might feel toward
+      the ordinary masses of men. I held conversations with nature in a tongue
+      which they could not understand. I was in daily communication with living
+      wonders such as they never imagined in their wildest visions, I penetrated
+      beyond the external portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries.
+      Where they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the
+      window-glass, I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions
+      common to physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles
+      as fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould,
+      which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped away from
+      her jam-pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew, enchanted
+      gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage and most
+      astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these microscopic
+      forests hung strange fruits glittering with green and silver and gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was the
+      pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed. I
+      talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my microscope, I
+      dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, poring over the
+      marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who, having discovered the
+      ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should resolve to
+      enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret of its
+      locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment. I destined myself to
+      be a microscopist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was
+      ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellects engaged in the
+      same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand
+      times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek, Williamson,
+      Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schultz, Dujardin, Schact, and Schleiden were then
+      entirely unknown to me, or, if known, I was ignorant of their patient and
+      wonderful researches. In every fresh specimen of cryptogamia which I
+      placed beneath my instrument I believed that I discovered wonders of which
+      the world was as yet ignorant. I remember well the thrill of delight and
+      admiration that shot through me the first time that I discovered the
+      common wheel animalcule (Rotifera vulgaris) expanding and contracting its
+      flexible spokes and seemingly rotating through the water. Alas! as I grew
+      older, and obtained some works treating of my favorite study, I found that
+      I was only on the threshold of a science to the investigation of which
+      some of the greatest men of the age were devoting their lives and
+      intellects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I grew up, my parents, who saw but little likelihood of anything
+      practical resulting from the examination of bits of moss and drops of
+      water through a brass tube and a piece of glass, were anxious that I
+      should choose a profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was their desire that I should enter the counting-house of my uncle,
+      Ethan Blake, a prosperous merchant, who carried on business in New York.
+      This suggestion I decisively combated. I had no taste for trade; I should
+      only make a failure; in short, I refused to become a merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was necessary for me to select some pursuit. My parents were staid
+      New England people, who insisted on the necessity of labor, and therefore,
+      although, thanks to the bequest of my poor Aunt Agatha, I should, on
+      coming of age, inherit a small fortune sufficient to place me above want,
+      it was decided that, instead of waiting for this, I should act the nobler
+      part, and employ the intervening years in rendering myself independent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After much cogitation, I complied with the wishes of my family, and
+      selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York
+      Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my
+      relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased without fear
+      of detection. As long as I paid my Academy fees, I might shirk attending
+      the lectures if I chose; and, as I never had the remotest intention of
+      standing an examination, there was no danger of my being "plucked."
+      Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could obtain excellent
+      instruments, the newest publications, intimacy with men of pursuits
+      kindred with my own&mdash;in short, all things necessary to ensure a
+      profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an abundance
+      of money, few desires that were not bounded by my illuminating mirror on
+      one side and my object-glass on the other; what, therefore, was to prevent
+      my becoming an illustrious investigator of the veiled worlds? It was with
+      the most buoyant hope that I left my New England home and established
+      myself in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
+      obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very pretty
+      second floor, unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom, and a smaller
+      apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I furnished my
+      lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted all my energies to
+      the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited Pike, the celebrated
+      optician, and passed in review his splendid collection of microscopes&mdash;Field's
+      Compound, Hingham's, Spencer's, Nachet's Binocular (that founded on the
+      principles of the stereoscope), and at length fixed upon that form known
+      as Spencer's Trunnion Microscope, as combining the greatest number of
+      improvements with an almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I
+      purchased every possible accessory&mdash;draw-tubes, micrometers, a <i>camera
+      lucida</i>, lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators,
+      prisms, parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic
+      boxes, fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would
+      have been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I
+      afterward discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It
+      takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The
+      optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these valuable purchases. He
+      evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific
+      celebrity or a madman. I think he was inclined to the latter belief. I
+      suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he
+      is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a lunatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific students
+      have ever equaled. I had everything to learn relative to the delicate
+      study upon which I had embarked&mdash;a study involving the most earnest
+      patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand, the most
+      untiring eye, the most refined and subtle manipulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of my
+      laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every possible
+      contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was that I did
+      not know how to use some of my scientific implements&mdash;never having
+      been taught microscopies&mdash;and those whose use I understood
+      theoretically were of little avail until by practice I could attain the
+      necessary delicacy of handling. Still, such was the fury of my ambition,
+      such the untiring perseverance of my experiments, that, difficult of
+      credit as it may be, in the course of one year I became theoretically and
+      practically an accomplished microscopist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this period of my labors, in which I submitted specimens of every
+      substance that came under my observation to the action of my lenses, I
+      became a discoverer&mdash;in a small way, it is true, for I was very
+      young, but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's theory
+      that the <i>Volvox globator</i> was an animal, and proved that his
+      "monads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of a
+      vegetable cell, and were, when they reached their mature state, incapable
+      of the act of conjugation, or any true generative act, without which no
+      organism rising to any stage of life higher than vegetable can be said to
+      be complete. It was I who resolved the singular problem of rotation in the
+      cells and hairs of plants into ciliary attraction, in spite of the
+      assertions of Wenham and others that my explanation was the result of an
+      optical illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made as
+      they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found myself
+      stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active
+      microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common
+      complaint against many such that they supply the defects of their
+      instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths beyond
+      depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from
+      exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary micro-scopes of
+      immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the
+      envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those
+      imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to use!
+      How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose magnifying
+      power should be limited only by the resolvability of the object, and which
+      at the same time should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations&mdash;in
+      short, from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds
+      himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced that the simple
+      microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet perfect power, was
+      possible of construction. To attempt to bring the compound microscope up
+      to such a pitch would have been commencing at the wrong end; this latter
+      being simply a partially successful endeavor to remedy those very defects
+      of the simplest instrument which, if conquered, would leave nothing to be
+      desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist.
+      After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every
+      imaginable substance&mdash;glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial
+      crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials&mdash;in short,
+      having constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes&mdash;I
+      found myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an
+      extensive knowledge of glass-making. I was almost dead with despair. My
+      parents were surprised at my apparent want of progress in my medical
+      studies (I had not attended one lecture since my arrival in the city), and
+      the expenses of my mad pursuit had been so great as to embarrass me very
+      seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory on a
+      small diamond&mdash;that stone, from its great refracting power, having
+      always occupied my attention more than any other&mdash;when a young
+      Frenchman who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the habit of
+      occasionally visiting me, entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew
+      character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There was
+      something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell, and yet
+      went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should perhaps have said
+      peddle; for his operations were generally confined to the disposal of
+      single articles&mdash;a picture, for instance, or a rare carving in ivory,
+      or a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress of a Mexican <i>caballero</i>.
+      When I was first furnishing my rooms, he paid me a visit, which ended in
+      my purchasing an antique silver lamp, which he assured me was a Cellini&mdash;it
+      was handsome enough even for that&mdash;and some other knick-knacks for my
+      sitting-room. Why Simon should pursue this petty trade I never could
+      imagine. He apparently had plenty of money, and had the <i>entrée</i> of
+      the best houses in the city&mdash;taking care, however, I suppose, to
+      drive no bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at
+      length to the conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some
+      greater object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance
+      to be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was none of my affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of considerable
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Ah! mon ami!</i>" he cried, before I could even offer him the ordinary
+      salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the most
+      astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the house of Madame
+      &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;. How does the little animal&mdash;<i>le renard</i>&mdash;name
+      himself in the Latin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Vulpes," I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! yes&mdash;Vulpes. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulpes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The spirit medium?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, the great medium. Great heavens! what a woman! I write on a slip of
+      paper many of questions concerning affairs of the most secret&mdash;affairs
+      that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the most profound; and
+      behold, by example, what occurs? This devil of a woman makes me replies
+      the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me of things that I do not
+      love to talk of to myself. What am I to think? I am fixed to the earth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulpes replied to
+      questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events known
+      only to yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of some
+      alarm. "She related to me things&mdash;But," he added after a pause, and
+      suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with these follies? It
+      was all the biology, without doubt. It goes without saying that it has not
+      my credence. But why are we here, <i>mon ami?</i> It has occurred to me to
+      discover the most beautiful thing as you can imagine&mdash;a vase with
+      green lizards on it, composed by the great Bernard Palissy. It is in my
+      apartment; let us mount. I go to show it to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy and
+      his enameled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark a great
+      discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes, set me
+      on a new track. What if, through communication with more subtle organisms
+      than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal which perhaps a
+      life, of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to attain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was mentally
+      arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the
+      promise of an ample fee, I found Madame Vulpes awaiting me at her
+      residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with keen and rather
+      cruel dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth and
+      under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on the
+      ground floor, very sparsely furnished. In the centre of the room, close to
+      where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany table. If I had
+      come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could not have
+      looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt to inspire
+      the visitor with awe. Everything bore a simple and practical aspect. This
+      intercourse with the spiritual world was evidently as familiar an
+      occupation with Mrs. Vulpes as eating her dinner or riding in an omnibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You come for a communication, Mr. Linley?" said the medium, in a dry,
+      businesslike tone of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By appointment&mdash;yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of communication do you want&mdash;a written one?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I wish for a written one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From any particular spirit?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you ever known this spirit on this earth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from him
+      some information which he ought to be able to give better than any other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you seat yourself at the table, Mr. Lin-ley," said the medium, "and
+      place your hands upon it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I obeyed, Mrs. Vulpes being seated opposite to me, with her hands also on
+      the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half, when a violent
+      succession of raps came on the table, on the back of my chair, on the
+      floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window-panes. Mrs. Vulpes
+      smiled composedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are very strong to-night," she remarked. "You are fortunate." She
+      then continued, "Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vigorous affirmative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will the particular spirit he desires to speak with communicate?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very confused rapping followed this question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know what they mean," said Mrs. Vulpes, addressing herself to me; "they
+      wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that you desire
+      to converse with. Is that so?" she added, speaking to her invisible
+      guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That it was so was evident from the numerous affirmatory responses. While
+      this was going on, I tore a slip from my pocket-book and scribbled a name
+      under the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will this spirit communicate in writing with this gentleman?" asked the
+      medium once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment's pause, her hand seemed to be seized with a violent
+      tremor, shaking so forcibly that the table vibrated. She said that a
+      spirit had seized her hand and would write. I handed her some sheets of
+      paper that were on the table and a pencil. The latter she held loosely in
+      her hand, which presently began to move over the paper with a singular and
+      seemingly involuntary motion. After a few moments had elapsed, she handed
+      me the paper, on which I found written, in a large, uncultivated hand, the
+      words, "He is not here, but has been sent for." A pause of a minute or so
+      ensued, during which Mrs. Vulpes remained perfectly silent, but the raps
+      continued at regular intervals. When the short period I mention had
+      elapsed, the hand of the medium was again seized with its convulsive
+      tremor, and she wrote, under this strange influence, a few words on the
+      paper, which she handed to me. They were as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am here. Question me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Leeuwenhoek</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was astounded. The name was identical with that I had written beneath
+      the table, and carefully kept concealed. Neither was it at all probable
+      that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Vulpes should know even the name of
+      the great father of microscopies. It may have been biology; but this
+      theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip&mdash;still
+      concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes&mdash;a series of questions which, to avoid
+      tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the order in which they
+      occurred:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.&mdash;Can the microscope be brought to perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spirit&mdash;Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.&mdash;Am I destined to accomplish this great task?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spirit.&mdash;You are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.&mdash;I wish to know how to proceed to attain this end. For the love
+      which you bear to science, help me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spirit&mdash;A diamond of one hundred and forty carats, submitted to
+      electro-magnetic currents for a long period, will experience a
+      rearrangement of its atoms <i>inter se</i> and from that stone you will
+      form the universal lens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.&mdash;Will great discoveries result from the use of such a lens?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spirit&mdash;So great that all that has gone before is as nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I.&mdash;But the refractive power of the diamond is so immense that the
+      image will be formed within the lens. How is that difficulty to be
+      surmounted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spirit&mdash;Pierce the lens through its axis, and the difficulty is
+      obviated. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will itself
+      serve as a tube to look through. Now I am called. Good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can not at all describe the effect that these extraordinary
+      communications had upon me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological
+      theory could account for the <i>discovery</i> of the lens. The medium
+      might, by means of biological <i>rapport</i> with my mind, have gone so
+      far as to read my questions and reply to them coherently. But biology
+      could not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the
+      crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects and admit of its
+      being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have passed
+      through my head, it is true; but if so, I had forgotten it. In my excited
+      condition of mind there was no course left but to become a convert, and it
+      was in a state of the most painful nervous exaltation that I left the
+      medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to the door, hoping that I
+      was satisfied. The raps followed us as we went through the hall, sounding
+      on the balusters, the flooring, and even the lintels of the door. I
+      hastily expressed my satisfaction, and escaped hurriedly into the cool
+      night air. I walked home with but one thought possessing me&mdash;how to
+      obtain a diamond of the immense size required. My entire means multiplied
+      a hundred times over would have been inadequate to its purchase. Besides,
+      such stones are rare, and become historical. I could find such only in the
+      regalia of Eastern or European monarchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague impulse
+      urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room
+      unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a Carcel lamp,
+      apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held in his
+      hands. As I entered, he started suddenly, thrust his hand into his breast
+      pocket, and turned to me with a face crimson with confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well, don't
+      blush so much; I won't ask to see it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative
+      protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as if a
+      sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent words,
+      and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his liquors.
+      Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with my own idea
+      to pay much attention to anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I
+      continued. "Simon, she told me wonderful things to-night, or rather was
+      the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a
+      diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my lips
+      when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me savagely, and,
+      rushing to the mantelpiece, where some foreign weapons hung on the wall,
+      caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it furiously before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited. "No!
+      you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted with that
+      demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me, I am brave! You
+      can not make me fear!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this, uttered in a loud voice, trembling with excitement, astounded
+      me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon the edges of
+      Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to reassure him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you mean. I
+      went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific problem, to the
+      solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the size I just mentioned
+      was necessary. You were never alluded to during the evening, nor, so far
+      as I was concerned, even thought of. What can be the meaning of this
+      outburst? If you happen to have a set of valuable diamonds in your
+      possession, you need fear nothing from me. The diamond which I require you
+      could not possess; or, if you did possess it, you would not be living
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in my tone must have completely reassured him, for his
+      expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment,
+      combined however, with a certain suspicious attention to my movements. He
+      laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he was at certain
+      moments subject to a species of vertigo, which betrayed itself in
+      incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed off as rapidly as they
+      came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his weapon aside while making this explanation, and endeavored,
+      with some success, to assume a more cheerful air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to
+      analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe
+      the mystery to the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Simon," I said gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of Burgundy.
+      I have a case of Lausseure's <i>Clos Vougeot</i> downstairs, fragrant with
+      the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Côte d'Or. Let us have up a
+      couple of bottles. What say you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With all my heart," answered Simon smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous
+      vintage, that of 1848, a year when war and wine throve together, and its
+      pure but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system.
+      By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which I
+      knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as ever,
+      only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through my limbs.
+      Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to singing
+      French <i>chansons</i> of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly from
+      the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses, and,
+      fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said, "Simon, I have deceived
+      you. I learned your secret this evening. You may as well be frank with me.
+      Mrs. Vulpes&mdash;or rather, one of her spirits&mdash;told me all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to fade
+      away, and he made a movement toward the weapon that he had a short time
+      before laid down, I stopped him with my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Monster!" he cried passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You shall
+      never have it! I swear by my mother!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell me all
+      about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness
+      that I was entirely mistaken&mdash;that I was intoxicated; then asked me
+      to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I
+      pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and
+      hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his
+      breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamplight was shivered into a
+      thousand prismatic arrows as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that
+      glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance
+      that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with wonder
+      and&mdash;must I confess it?&mdash;with envy. How could he have obtained
+      this treasure? In reply to my questions, I could just gather from his
+      drunken statements (of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was affected)
+      that he had been superintending a gang of slaves engaged in
+      diamond-washing in Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a diamond,
+      but, instead of informing his employers, had quietly watched the negro
+      until he saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up and fled with
+      it, but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of it publicly&mdash;so
+      valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too much attention to its
+      owner's antecedents&mdash;and he had not been able to discover any of
+      those obscure channels by which such matters are conveyed away safely. He
+      added that, in accordance with oriental practice, he had named his diamond
+      with the fanciful title of "The Eye of Morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond
+      attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories of
+      light ever imagined or described seemed to pulsate in its crystalline
+      chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred and
+      forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of destiny seemed
+      in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek communicates to
+      me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless means which he
+      directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I determined, with the
+      most perfect deliberation, to possess myself of Simon's diamond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat opposite to him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly revolved
+      the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so foolish an act
+      as a common theft, which would of course be discovered, or at least
+      necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must interfere with my
+      scientific plans. There was but one step to be taken&mdash;to kill Simon.
+      After all, what was the life of a little peddling Jew in comparison with
+      the interests of science? Human beings are taken every day from the
+      condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons. This man, Simon, was
+      by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I believed on my soul a
+      murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any felon condemned by the
+      laws: why should I not, like government, contrive that his punishment
+      should contribute to the progress of human knowledge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach.
+      There stood upon the mantelpiece a bottle half full of French laudanum.
+      Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just restored to him,
+      that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his glass. In a quarter of
+      an hour he was in a profound sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket in
+      which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I laid him so
+      that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed myself of the Malay
+      creese, which I held in my right hand, while with the other I discovered
+      as accurately as I could by pulsation the exact locality of the heart. It
+      was essential that all the aspects of his death should lead to the surmise
+      of self-murder. I calculated the exact angle at which it was probable that
+      the weapon, if leveled by Simon's own hand, would enter his breast; then
+      with one powerful blow I thrust it up to the hilt in the very spot which I
+      desired to penetrate. A convulsive thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I
+      heard a smothered sound issue from his throat, precisely like the bursting
+      of a large air-bubble sent up by a diver when it reaches the surface of
+      the water; he turned half round on his side, and, as if to assist my plans
+      more effectually, his right hand, moved by some mere spasmodic impulse,
+      clasped the handle of the creese, which it remained holding with
+      extraordinary muscular tenacity. Beyond this there was no apparent
+      struggle. The laudanum, I presume, paralyzed the usual nervous action. He
+      must have died instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all suspicion
+      of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the house to Simon
+      himself, it was necessary that the door should be found in the morning <i>locked
+      on the in-side</i>. How to do this, and afterward escape myself? Not by
+      the window; that was a physical impossibility. Besides, I was determined
+      that the windows <i>also</i> should be found bolted. The solution was
+      simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for a peculiar instrument
+      which I had used for holding small slippery substances, such as minute
+      spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long,
+      slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip and a considerable leverage,
+      which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was
+      simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem
+      in this vise, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door.
+      Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's
+      hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves.
+      I also emptied some more laudanum into Simon's glass&mdash;having first
+      removed from it all traces of wine&mdash;cleaned the other wine-glass, and
+      brought the bottles away with me. If traces of two persons drinking had
+      been found in the room, the question naturally would have arisen, Who was
+      the second? Besides, the wine-bottles might have been identified as
+      belonging to me. The laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in
+      his stomach, in case of a <i>post-mortem</i> examination. The theory
+      naturally would be that he first intended to poison himself, but, after
+      swallowing a little of the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or
+      changed his mind from other motives, and chose the dagger. These
+      arrangements made, I walked out, leaving the gas burning, locked the door
+      with my vise, and went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon. The
+      servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning&mdash;the light streaming on
+      the dark landing from under the door&mdash;peeped through the keyhole and
+      saw Simon on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave the alarm. The door was burst open, and the neighborhood was in a
+      fever of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an
+      inquest; but no clew to his death beyond that of suicide could be
+      obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends
+      the preceding week that seemed to point to self-destruction. One gentleman
+      swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired of life." His
+      landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last month's rent,
+      remarked that "he should not pay him rent much longer." All the other
+      evidence corresponded&mdash;the door locked inside, the position of the
+      corpse, the burned papers. As I anticipated, no one knew of the possession
+      of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was suggested for his murder.
+      The jury, after a prolonged examination, brought in the usual verdict, and
+      the neighborhood once more settled down to its accustomed quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The three months succeeding Simon's catastrophe I devoted night and day to
+      my diamond lens. I had constructed a vast galvanic battery, composed of
+      nearly two thousand pairs of plates: a higher power I dared not use, lest
+      the diamond should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine I was
+      enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually through my
+      great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every day. At the
+      expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing of the lens,
+      a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great density of the
+      stone, and the care required to be taken with the curvatures of the
+      surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest and most harassing
+      that I had yet undergone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the eventful moment came; the lens was completed. I stood
+      trembling on the threshold of new worlds. I had the realization of
+      Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to be
+      placed upon its platform. My hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop of
+      water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to its
+      examination, a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid evaporation
+      of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass under the
+      lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and a mirror, a
+      powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute hole drilled
+      through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing save what
+      seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast, luminous abyss. A pure white
+      light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space itself, was
+      my first impression. Gently, and with the greatest care, I depressed the
+      lens a few hairbreadths. The wondrous illumination still continued, but as
+      the lens approached the object a scene of indescribable beauty was
+      unfolded to my view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I seemed to gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far
+      beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the
+      entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous life.
+      Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse. I
+      comprehended instantly that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had
+      penetrated beyond the grosser particles of aqueous matter, beyond the
+      realms of infusoria and protozoa, down to the original gaseous globule,
+      into whose luminous interior I was gazing as into an almost boundless dome
+      filled with a supernatural radiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, however, no brilliant void into which I looked. On every side I
+      beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with the
+      most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what might
+      be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds of the
+      highest rarity&mdash;that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable
+      formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the gilding
+      of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away into the
+      illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous forests,
+      dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of unimaginable
+      brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid glades until every
+      vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of many-colored drooping
+      silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or flowers, pied with a
+      thousand hues, lustrous and ever-varying, bubbled from the crowns of this
+      fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers, no forms animate or
+      inanimate, were to be seen, save those vast auroral copses that floated
+      serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and fruits and flowers
+      gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned to
+      solitude! I had hoped, at least, to discover some new form of animal life,
+      perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at present acquainted,
+      but still some living organism. I found my newly discovered world, if I
+      may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal
+      economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms our
+      most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through the
+      glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more attentively, and
+      found that I was not mistaken. Words can not depict the anxiety with which
+      I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it merely
+      some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated atmosphere of
+      the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality and motion? It
+      approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of cloud-foliage, for
+      seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the violet pennons that
+      trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently pushed aside, and the
+      form floated out into the broad light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a female human shape. When I say human, I mean it possessed the
+      outlines of humanity; but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty
+      lifted it illimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can not, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine
+      revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and
+      serene, evade my words. Her long, lustrous hair following her glorious
+      head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star,
+      seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the
+      bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely the
+      wondrous harmonies of outline that inclosed her form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into
+      the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some
+      graceful naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear,
+      unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth with
+      the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still atmosphere
+      of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed suave and
+      enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual symphony of
+      Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines. This, indeed
+      was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared I if I had waded
+      to the portal of this wonder through another's blood. I would have given
+      my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an instant
+      of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the microscope
+      eagerly. Alas! as my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay beneath my
+      instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism sparkled on a
+      colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew, this beautiful
+      being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not more distant from
+      me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to the microscope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Animula (let me now call her by that dear name which I subsequently
+      bestowed on her) had changed her position. She had again approached the
+      wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upward. Presently one of the
+      trees&mdash;as I must call them&mdash;unfolded a long ciliary process,
+      with which it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its
+      summit, and, sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The
+      sylph took it in her delicate hand and began to eat. My attention was so
+      entirely absorbed by her that I could not apply myself to the task of
+      determining whether this singular plant was or was not instinct with
+      volition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I watched her, as she made her repast, with the most profound attention.
+      The suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame;
+      my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of
+      the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the
+      power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean and float with her
+      through those grooves of purple and gold! While I was thus breathlessly
+      following her every movement, she suddenly started, seemed to listen for a
+      moment, and then cleaving the brilliant ether in which she was floating,
+      like a flash of light, pierced through the opaline forest and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It seemed
+      as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still before me,
+      but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden disappearance? Had
+      she a lover or a husband? Yes, that was the solution! Some signal from a
+      happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues of the forest, and she
+      had obeyed the summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled me.
+      I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I battled
+      against the fatal conclusion&mdash;but in vain. It was so. I had no escape
+      from it. I loved an animalcule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that, thanks to the marvelous power of my microscope, she
+      appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting aspect
+      of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in the more
+      easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and delicate
+      and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that? Every time
+      that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument it fell on a miserable drop
+      of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt all that could
+      make my life lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical
+      walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that filled
+      my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life with the
+      knowledge of her remote sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be something to have established even the faintest personal link
+      to bind us together&mdash;to know that at times, when roaming through
+      these enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger who had
+      broken the monotony of her life with his presence and left a gentle memory
+      in her heart!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it could not be. No invention of which human intellect was capable
+      could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast my
+      soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant of the
+      adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when closed,
+      beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from the room,
+      and flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my microscope,
+      I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that contained my
+      all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded by its
+      moderators, burning when I went to bed the night before. I found the sylph
+      bathing, as it were, with an expression of pleasure animating her
+      features, in the brilliant light which surrounded her. She tossed her
+      lustrous golden hair over her shoulders with innocent coquetry. She lay at
+      full length in the transparent medium, in which she supported herself with
+      ease, and gamboled with the enchanting grace that the nymph Salmacis might
+      have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus. I
+      tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection were
+      developed. I lessened the lamplight considerably. By the dim light that
+      remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across her face. She
+      looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I flooded the stage of
+      the microscope again with a full stream of light, and her whole expression
+      changed. She sprang forward like some some substance deprived of all
+      weight. Her eyes sparkled and her lips moved. Ah! if science had only the
+      means of conducting and reduplicating sounds, as it does rays of light,
+      what carols of happiness would then have entranced my ears! what jubilant
+      hymns to Adonais would have thrilled the illumined air!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Cabalis peopled his mystic
+      world with sylphs-beautiful beings whose breath of life was lambent fire,
+      and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and purest light. The
+      Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had practically realized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely know.
+      I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into the night,
+      I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw no one, went
+      nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. My whole
+      life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish
+      saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my
+      passion&mdash;a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening
+      conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never
+      could behold me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest and continual
+      brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I determined
+      to make some effort to wean myself from it. "Come," I said, "this is at
+      best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms which
+      in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from female society has
+      produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her with the beautiful
+      women of your own world, and this false enchantment will vanish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the advertisement
+      of a celebrated <i>danseuse</i> who appeared nightly at Niblo's. The
+      Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most beautiful as well
+      as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly dressed and went to
+      the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The curtain drew up. The usual semicircle of fairies in white muslin were
+      standing on the right toe around the enameled flower-bank of green canvas,
+      on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a flute is heard. The
+      fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all stand on the left toe, and
+      the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She bounded forward amid thunders
+      of applause, and, lighting on one foot, remained poised in the air.
+      Heavens! was this the great enchantress that had drawn monarchs at her
+      chariot-wheels? Those heavy, muscular limbs, those thick ankles, those
+      cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those crudely painted cheeks!
+      Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid, expressive eyes, the harmonious
+      limbs of Animula?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her
+      limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic
+      efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it no
+      longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me, I rose
+      from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina's <i>pas-de-fascination</i>
+      and abruptly quitted the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of my sylph.
+      I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be impossible. I
+      applied my eyes to the lens. Animula was there&mdash;but what could have
+      happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place during my
+      absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I
+      gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed
+      heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill&mdash;ill,
+      and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have
+      forfeited all claims to my human birthright if I could only have been
+      dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from
+      whom fate had forever divided me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that
+      afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features
+      contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The
+      wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their hues
+      were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched Animula for
+      hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to wither away
+      under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not looked at the
+      water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it; for it reminded
+      me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself. I hurriedly looked
+      down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was still there&mdash;but,
+      great heavens, the water drop had vanished! The awful truth burst upon me;
+      it had evaporated, until it had become so minute as to be invisible to the
+      naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom, the one that contained
+      Animula&mdash;and she was dying!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rushed again to the front of the lens and looked through. Alas! the last
+      agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away, and
+      Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light.
+      Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shriveling
+      up into nothings; the eyes&mdash;those eyes that shone like heaven&mdash;being
+      quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and
+      discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of the
+      blackening form&mdash;and I fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the
+      wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I
+      crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for many months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have
+      neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I live
+      on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to lecture
+      on optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me while I
+      lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I suppose
+      that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense when his
+      brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon among the
+      shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Diamond Lens
+
+Author: Fitz-James O'brien
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23169]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIAMOND LENS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DIAMOND LENS
+
+By Fitz-James O'brien
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+FROM a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations
+had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than
+ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my
+inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me by drilling in a
+disk of copper a small hole in which a drop of pure water was sustained
+by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some
+fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect
+forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a
+preternatural state of excitement.
+
+Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to
+me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to
+me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency,
+and ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed, immediately
+on his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes
+that intervened between that promise and his departure.
+
+Meantime, I was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the
+remotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employed
+in vain attempts to realize that instrument the theory of whose
+construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of
+glass containing those oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as
+"bull's-eyes" were ruthlessly destroyed in the hope of obtaining lenses
+of marvelous power. I even went so far as to extract the crystalline
+humor from the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored to press
+it into the microscopic service. I plead guilty to having stolen the
+glasses from my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with a dim idea of grinding
+them into lenses of wondrous magnifying properties--in which attempt it
+is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.
+
+At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order known as
+Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars.
+As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not
+have been selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on the
+microscope--its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then for
+the first time the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dull veil of
+ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to
+roll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt toward my
+companions as the seer might feel toward the ordinary masses of men.
+I held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could not
+understand. I was in daily communication with living wonders such as
+they never imagined in their wildest visions, I penetrated beyond the
+external portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries. Where
+they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass,
+I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to
+physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as
+fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould,
+which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped
+away from her jam-pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew,
+enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage
+and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these
+microscopic forests hung strange fruits glittering with green and silver
+and gold.
+
+It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was the
+pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed.
+I talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my microscope, I
+dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, poring over the
+marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who, having discovered
+the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should
+resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret
+of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment. I destined
+myself to be a microscopist.
+
+Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was
+ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellects engaged in the
+same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand
+times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek, Williamson,
+Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schultz, Dujardin, Schact, and Schleiden were then
+entirely unknown to me, or, if known, I was ignorant of their patient
+and wonderful researches. In every fresh specimen of cryptogamia which
+I placed beneath my instrument I believed that I discovered wonders
+of which the world was as yet ignorant. I remember well the thrill
+of delight and admiration that shot through me the first time that I
+discovered the common wheel animalcule (Rotifera vulgaris) expanding
+and contracting its flexible spokes and seemingly rotating through the
+water. Alas! as I grew older, and obtained some works treating of my
+favorite study, I found that I was only on the threshold of a science
+to the investigation of which some of the greatest men of the age were
+devoting their lives and intellects.
+
+As I grew up, my parents, who saw but little likelihood of anything
+practical resulting from the examination of bits of moss and drops of
+water through a brass tube and a piece of glass, were anxious that I
+should choose a profession.
+
+It was their desire that I should enter the counting-house of my uncle,
+Ethan Blake, a prosperous merchant, who carried on business in New
+York. This suggestion I decisively combated. I had no taste for trade; I
+should only make a failure; in short, I refused to become a merchant.
+
+But it was necessary for me to select some pursuit. My parents were
+staid New England people, who insisted on the necessity of labor, and
+therefore, although, thanks to the bequest of my poor Aunt Agatha, I
+should, on coming of age, inherit a small fortune sufficient to place me
+above want, it was decided that, instead of waiting for this, I should
+act the nobler part, and employ the intervening years in rendering
+myself independent.
+
+After much cogitation, I complied with the wishes of my family, and
+selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York
+Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my
+relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased without
+fear of detection. As long as I paid my Academy fees, I might shirk
+attending the lectures if I chose; and, as I never had the remotest
+intention of standing an examination, there was no danger of my being
+"plucked." Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could
+obtain excellent instruments, the newest publications, intimacy with
+men of pursuits kindred with my own--in short, all things necessary to
+ensure a profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an
+abundance of money, few desires that were not bounded by my illuminating
+mirror on one side and my object-glass on the other; what, therefore,
+was to prevent my becoming an illustrious investigator of the veiled
+worlds? It was with the most buoyant hope that I left my New England
+home and established myself in New York.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
+obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very
+pretty second floor, unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom,
+and a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I
+furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted
+all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited
+Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his splendid
+collection of microscopes--Field's Compound, Hingham's, Spencer's,
+Nachet's Binocular (that founded on the principles of the stereoscope),
+and at length fixed upon that form known as Spencer's Trunnion
+Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an
+almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased
+every possible accessory--draw-tubes, micrometers, a _camera lucida_,
+lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms,
+parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes,
+fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have
+been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I
+afterward discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It
+takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The
+optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these valuable purchases.
+He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific
+celebrity or a madman. I think he was inclined to the latter belief. I
+suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which
+he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a
+lunatic.
+
+Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific
+students have ever equaled. I had everything to learn relative to the
+delicate study upon which I had embarked--a study involving the most
+earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand,
+the most untiring eye, the most refined and subtle manipulation.
+
+For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of
+my laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every possible
+contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was that I did
+not know how to use some of my scientific implements--never having been
+taught microscopies--and those whose use I understood theoretically were
+of little avail until by practice I could attain the necessary delicacy
+of handling. Still, such was the fury of my ambition, such the untiring
+perseverance of my experiments, that, difficult of credit as it may
+be, in the course of one year I became theoretically and practically an
+accomplished microscopist.
+
+During this period of my labors, in which I submitted specimens of every
+substance that came under my observation to the action of my lenses, I
+became a discoverer--in a small way, it is true, for I was very young,
+but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's theory that
+the _Volvox globator_ was an animal, and proved that his "monads" with
+stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of a vegetable
+cell, and were, when they reached their mature state, incapable of
+the act of conjugation, or any true generative act, without which no
+organism rising to any stage of life higher than vegetable can be said
+to be complete. It was I who resolved the singular problem of rotation
+in the cells and hairs of plants into ciliary attraction, in spite of
+the assertions of Wenham and others that my explanation was the result
+of an optical illusion.
+
+But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made
+as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found
+myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active
+microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common
+complaint against many such that they supply the defects of their
+instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths beyond
+depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from
+exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary micro-scopes
+of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the
+envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those
+imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to
+use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose
+magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the
+object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and
+chromatic aberrations--in short, from all the obstacles over which the
+poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced
+that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet
+perfect power, was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the
+compound microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the
+wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor
+to remedy those very defects of the simplest instrument which, if
+conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.
+
+It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist.
+After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every
+imaginable substance--glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial crystals
+formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials--in short, having
+constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes--I found
+myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an extensive
+knowledge of glass-making. I was almost dead with despair. My parents
+were surprised at my apparent want of progress in my medical studies
+(I had not attended one lecture since my arrival in the city), and the
+expenses of my mad pursuit had been so great as to embarrass me very
+seriously.
+
+I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory on
+a small diamond--that stone, from its great refracting power, having
+always occupied my attention more than any other--when a young
+Frenchman who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the habit of
+occasionally visiting me, entered the room.
+
+I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew
+character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There was
+something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell, and yet
+went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should perhaps have said
+peddle; for his operations were generally confined to the disposal of
+single articles--a picture, for instance, or a rare carving in ivory, or
+a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress of a Mexican _caballero_. When
+I was first furnishing my rooms, he paid me a visit, which ended in my
+purchasing an antique silver lamp, which he assured me was a Cellini--it
+was handsome enough even for that--and some other knick-knacks for my
+sitting-room. Why Simon should pursue this petty trade I never could
+imagine. He apparently had plenty of money, and had the _entree_ of the
+best houses in the city--taking care, however, I suppose, to drive no
+bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at length
+to the conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some
+greater object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance
+to be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was none of my
+affair.
+
+On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of
+considerable excitement.
+
+"_Ah! mon ami!_" he cried, before I could even offer him the ordinary
+salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the most
+astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the house of
+Madame ------. How does the little animal--_le renard_--name himself in
+the Latin?"
+
+"Vulpes," I answered.
+
+"Ah! yes--Vulpes. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulpes."
+
+"The spirit medium?"
+
+"Yes, the great medium. Great heavens! what a woman! I write on a
+slip of paper many of questions concerning affairs of the most
+secret--affairs that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the
+most profound; and behold, by example, what occurs? This devil of a
+woman makes me replies the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me
+of things that I do not love to talk of to myself. What am I to think? I
+am fixed to the earth!"
+
+"Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulpes replied to
+questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events
+known only to yourself?"
+
+"Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of some
+alarm. "She related to me things--But," he added after a pause, and
+suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with these follies?
+It was all the biology, without doubt. It goes without saying that it
+has not my credence. But why are we here, _mon ami?_ It has occurred to
+me to discover the most beautiful thing as you can imagine--a vase with
+green lizards on it, composed by the great Bernard Palissy. It is in my
+apartment; let us mount. I go to show it to you."
+
+I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy and
+his enameled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark a great
+discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes,
+set me on a new track. What if, through communication with more subtle
+organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal which
+perhaps a life, of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to
+attain?
+
+While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was mentally
+arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the
+promise of an ample fee, I found Madame Vulpes awaiting me at her
+residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with keen and rather
+cruel dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth
+and under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on
+the ground floor, very sparsely furnished. In the centre of the room,
+close to where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany table.
+If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could
+not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt
+to inspire the visitor with awe. Everything bore a simple and practical
+aspect. This intercourse with the spiritual world was evidently as
+familiar an occupation with Mrs. Vulpes as eating her dinner or riding
+in an omnibus.
+
+"You come for a communication, Mr. Linley?" said the medium, in a dry,
+businesslike tone of voice.
+
+"By appointment--yes."
+
+"What sort of communication do you want--a written one?"
+
+"Yes, I wish for a written one."
+
+"From any particular spirit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you ever known this spirit on this earth?"
+
+"Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from
+him some information which he ought to be able to give better than any
+other."
+
+"Will you seat yourself at the table, Mr. Lin-ley," said the medium,
+"and place your hands upon it?"
+
+I obeyed, Mrs. Vulpes being seated opposite to me, with her hands also
+on the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half, when a
+violent succession of raps came on the table, on the back of my chair,
+on the floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window-panes.
+Mrs. Vulpes smiled composedly.
+
+"They are very strong to-night," she remarked. "You are fortunate." She
+then continued, "Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?"
+
+Vigorous affirmative.
+
+"Will the particular spirit he desires to speak with communicate?"
+
+A very confused rapping followed this question.
+
+"I know what they mean," said Mrs. Vulpes, addressing herself to me;
+"they wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that
+you desire to converse with. Is that so?" she added, speaking to her
+invisible guests.
+
+That it was so was evident from the numerous affirmatory responses.
+While this was going on, I tore a slip from my pocket-book and scribbled
+a name under the table.
+
+"Will this spirit communicate in writing with this gentleman?" asked the
+medium once more.
+
+After a moment's pause, her hand seemed to be seized with a violent
+tremor, shaking so forcibly that the table vibrated. She said that a
+spirit had seized her hand and would write. I handed her some sheets of
+paper that were on the table and a pencil. The latter she held loosely
+in her hand, which presently began to move over the paper with a
+singular and seemingly involuntary motion. After a few moments had
+elapsed, she handed me the paper, on which I found written, in a large,
+uncultivated hand, the words, "He is not here, but has been sent for."
+A pause of a minute or so ensued, during which Mrs. Vulpes remained
+perfectly silent, but the raps continued at regular intervals. When the
+short period I mention had elapsed, the hand of the medium was again
+seized with its convulsive tremor, and she wrote, under this strange
+influence, a few words on the paper, which she handed to me. They were
+as follows:
+
+"I am here. Question me.
+
+"_Leeuwenhoek_."
+
+I was astounded. The name was identical with that I had written beneath
+the table, and carefully kept concealed. Neither was it at all probable
+that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Vulpes should know even the name
+of the great father of microscopies. It may have been biology; but
+this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip--still
+concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes--a series of questions which, to avoid
+tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the order in which
+they occurred:
+
+I.--Can the microscope be brought to perfection?
+
+Spirit--Yes.
+
+I.--Am I destined to accomplish this great task?
+
+Spirit.--You are.
+
+I.--I wish to know how to proceed to attain this end. For the love which
+you bear to science, help me!
+
+Spirit--A diamond of one hundred and forty carats, submitted to
+electro-magnetic currents for a long period, will experience a
+rearrangement of its atoms _inter se_ and from that stone you will form
+the universal lens.
+
+I.--Will great discoveries result from the use of such a lens?
+
+Spirit--So great that all that has gone before is as nothing.
+
+I.--But the refractive power of the diamond is so immense that the image
+will be formed within the lens. How is that difficulty to be surmounted?
+
+Spirit--Pierce the lens through its axis, and the difficulty is
+obviated. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will
+itself serve as a tube to look through. Now I am called. Good-night.
+
+I can not at all describe the effect that these extraordinary
+communications had upon me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological
+theory could account for the _discovery_ of the lens. The medium might,
+by means of biological _rapport_ with my mind, have gone so far as to
+read my questions and reply to them coherently. But biology could
+not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the
+crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects and admit of
+its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have
+passed through my head, it is true; but if so, I had forgotten it. In
+my excited condition of mind there was no course left but to become a
+convert, and it was in a state of the most painful nervous exaltation
+that I left the medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to
+the door, hoping that I was satisfied. The raps followed us as we went
+through the hall, sounding on the balusters, the flooring, and even the
+lintels of the door. I hastily expressed my satisfaction, and escaped
+hurriedly into the cool night air. I walked home with but one thought
+possessing me--how to obtain a diamond of the immense size required. My
+entire means multiplied a hundred times over would have been inadequate
+to its purchase. Besides, such stones are rare, and become historical. I
+could find such only in the regalia of Eastern or European monarchs.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague
+impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room
+unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a Carcel
+lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held
+in his hands. As I entered, he started suddenly, thrust his hand into
+his breast pocket, and turned to me with a face crimson with confusion.
+
+"What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well,
+don't blush so much; I won't ask to see it."
+
+Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative
+protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.
+
+"Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."
+
+This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as
+if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent
+words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his
+liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with
+my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.
+
+"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I
+continued. "Simon, she told me wonderful things to-night, or rather
+was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a
+diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"
+
+Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my lips
+when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me savagely, and,
+rushing to the mantelpiece, where some foreign weapons hung on the wall,
+caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it furiously before him.
+
+"No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited. "No!
+you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted with that
+demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me, I am brave! You
+can not make me fear!"
+
+All this, uttered in a loud voice, trembling with excitement, astounded
+me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon the edges of
+Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to reassure him.
+
+"My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you mean.
+I went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific problem,
+to the solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the size I just
+mentioned was necessary. You were never alluded to during the evening,
+nor, so far as I was concerned, even thought of. What can be the meaning
+of this outburst? If you happen to have a set of valuable diamonds in
+your possession, you need fear nothing from me. The diamond which I
+require you could not possess; or, if you did possess it, you would not
+be living here."
+
+Something in my tone must have completely reassured him, for his
+expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment,
+combined however, with a certain suspicious attention to my movements.
+He laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he was at certain
+moments subject to a species of vertigo, which betrayed itself in
+incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed off as rapidly as they
+came.
+
+He put his weapon aside while making this explanation, and endeavored,
+with some success, to assume a more cheerful air.
+
+All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed
+to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to
+probe the mystery to the bottom.
+
+"Simon," I said gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of
+Burgundy. I have a case of Lausseure's _Clos Vougeot_ downstairs,
+fragrant with the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Cote d'Or.
+Let us have up a couple of bottles. What say you?"
+
+"With all my heart," answered Simon smilingly.
+
+I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous
+vintage, that of 1848, a year when war and wine throve together, and its
+pure but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system.
+By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which
+I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as
+ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through
+my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to
+singing French _chansons_ of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly
+from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses,
+and, fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said, "Simon, I have
+deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. You may as well be
+frank with me. Mrs. Vulpes--or rather, one of her spirits--told me all."
+
+He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to fade
+away, and he made a movement toward the weapon that he had a short time
+before laid down, I stopped him with my hand.
+
+"Monster!" he cried passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You
+shall never have it! I swear by my mother!"
+
+"I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell me
+all about it."
+
+The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness
+that I was entirely mistaken--that I was intoxicated; then asked me to
+swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I
+pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and
+hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his
+breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamplight was shivered into
+a thousand prismatic arrows as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that
+glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance
+that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with
+wonder and--must I confess it?--with envy. How could he have obtained
+this treasure? In reply to my questions, I could just gather from
+his drunken statements (of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was
+affected) that he had been superintending a gang of slaves engaged
+in diamond-washing in Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a
+diamond, but, instead of informing his employers, had quietly watched
+the negro until he saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up and
+fled with it, but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of
+it publicly--so valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too
+much attention to its owner's antecedents--and he had not been able
+to discover any of those obscure channels by which such matters are
+conveyed away safely. He added that, in accordance with oriental
+practice, he had named his diamond with the fanciful title of "The Eye
+of Morning."
+
+While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond
+attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories
+of light ever imagined or described seemed to pulsate in its crystalline
+chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred
+and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of destiny
+seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek
+communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless
+means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I
+determined, with the most perfect deliberation, to possess myself of
+Simon's diamond.
+
+I sat opposite to him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly
+revolved the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so
+foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered,
+or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must
+interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be
+taken--to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a little peddling
+Jew in comparison with the interests of science? Human beings are taken
+every day from the condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons.
+This man, Simon, was by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I
+believed on my soul a murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any
+felon condemned by the laws: why should I not, like government,
+contrive that his punishment should contribute to the progress of human
+knowledge?
+
+The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach.
+There stood upon the mantelpiece a bottle half full of French laudanum.
+Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just restored to
+him, that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his glass. In a
+quarter of an hour he was in a profound sleep.
+
+I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket in
+which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I laid him
+so that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed myself of
+the Malay creese, which I held in my right hand, while with the other I
+discovered as accurately as I could by pulsation the exact locality of
+the heart. It was essential that all the aspects of his death should
+lead to the surmise of self-murder. I calculated the exact angle at
+which it was probable that the weapon, if leveled by Simon's own hand,
+would enter his breast; then with one powerful blow I thrust it up to
+the hilt in the very spot which I desired to penetrate. A convulsive
+thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I heard a smothered sound issue from
+his throat, precisely like the bursting of a large air-bubble sent up by
+a diver when it reaches the surface of the water; he turned half round
+on his side, and, as if to assist my plans more effectually, his right
+hand, moved by some mere spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the
+creese, which it remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity.
+Beyond this there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume,
+paralyzed the usual nervous action. He must have died instantly.
+
+There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all
+suspicion of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the house
+to Simon himself, it was necessary that the door should be found in the
+morning _locked on the in-side_. How to do this, and afterward escape
+myself? Not by the window; that was a physical impossibility. Besides,
+I was determined that the windows _also_ should be found bolted. The
+solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for
+a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery
+substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was
+nothing more than a long, slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip
+and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the
+shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the
+lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vise, through the keyhole,
+from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing
+this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost
+always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some
+more laudanum into Simon's glass--having first removed from it all
+traces of wine--cleaned the other wine-glass, and brought the bottles
+away with me. If traces of two persons drinking had been found in the
+room, the question naturally would have arisen, Who was the second?
+Besides, the wine-bottles might have been identified as belonging to me.
+The laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in his stomach, in
+case of a _post-mortem_ examination. The theory naturally would be that
+he first intended to poison himself, but, after swallowing a little of
+the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or changed his mind from
+other motives, and chose the dagger. These arrangements made, I walked
+out, leaving the gas burning, locked the door with my vise, and went to
+bed.
+
+Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon.
+The servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning--the light streaming
+on the dark landing from under the door--peeped through the keyhole and
+saw Simon on the bed.
+
+She gave the alarm. The door was burst open, and the neighborhood was in
+a fever of excitement.
+
+Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an
+inquest; but no clew to his death beyond that of suicide could be
+obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends
+the preceding week that seemed to point to self-destruction. One
+gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired
+of life." His landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last
+month's rent, remarked that "he should not pay him rent much longer."
+All the other evidence corresponded--the door locked inside, the
+position of the corpse, the burned papers. As I anticipated, no one
+knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was
+suggested for his murder. The jury, after a prolonged examination,
+brought in the usual verdict, and the neighborhood once more settled
+down to its accustomed quiet.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The three months succeeding Simon's catastrophe I devoted night and day
+to my diamond lens. I had constructed a vast galvanic battery, composed
+of nearly two thousand pairs of plates: a higher power I dared not use,
+lest the diamond should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine
+I was enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually
+through my great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every
+day. At the expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing
+of the lens, a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great
+density of the stone, and the care required to be taken with the
+curvatures of the surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest
+and most harassing that I had yet undergone.
+
+At last the eventful moment came; the lens was completed. I stood
+trembling on the threshold of new worlds. I had the realization of
+Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to
+be placed upon its platform. My hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop
+of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to
+its examination, a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid
+evaporation of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass
+under the lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and
+a mirror, a powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute
+hole drilled through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing
+save what seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast, luminous abyss. A
+pure white light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space
+itself, was my first impression. Gently, and with the greatest care, I
+depressed the lens a few hairbreadths. The wondrous illumination
+still continued, but as the lens approached the object a scene of
+indescribable beauty was unfolded to my view.
+
+I seemed to gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far
+beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the
+entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous
+life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse.
+I comprehended instantly that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had
+penetrated beyond the grosser particles of aqueous matter, beyond the
+realms of infusoria and protozoa, down to the original gaseous globule,
+into whose luminous interior I was gazing as into an almost boundless
+dome filled with a supernatural radiance.
+
+It was, however, no brilliant void into which I looked. On every side I
+beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with
+the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what
+might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds
+of the highest rarity--that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable
+formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the
+gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away
+into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous
+forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of
+unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid
+glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of
+many-colored drooping silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or
+flowers, pied with a thousand hues, lustrous and ever-varying, bubbled
+from the crowns of this fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers,
+no forms animate or inanimate, were to be seen, save those vast auroral
+copses that floated serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and
+fruits and flowers gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere
+imagination.
+
+How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned to
+solitude! I had hoped, at least, to discover some new form of animal
+life, perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at present
+acquainted, but still some living organism. I found my newly discovered
+world, if I may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.
+
+While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal
+economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms our
+most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through
+the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more attentively,
+and found that I was not mistaken. Words can not depict the anxiety with
+which I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it
+merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated
+atmosphere of the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality
+and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of
+cloud-foliage, for seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the
+violet pennons that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently
+pushed aside, and the form floated out into the broad light.
+
+It was a female human shape. When I say human, I mean it possessed the
+outlines of humanity; but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty
+lifted it illimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.
+
+I can not, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine
+revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and
+serene, evade my words. Her long, lustrous hair following her glorious
+head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star,
+seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the
+bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely
+the wondrous harmonies of outline that inclosed her form.
+
+She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into
+the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some
+graceful naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear,
+unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth
+with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still
+atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed
+suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual
+symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines.
+This, indeed was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared
+I if I had waded to the portal of this wonder through another's blood.
+I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and
+delight.
+
+Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an
+instant of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the
+microscope eagerly. Alas! as my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay
+beneath my instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism
+sparkled on a colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew,
+this beautiful being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not
+more distant from me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to
+the microscope.
+
+Animula (let me now call her by that dear name which I subsequently
+bestowed on her) had changed her position. She had again approached the
+wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upward. Presently one of the
+trees--as I must call them--unfolded a long ciliary process, with which
+it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and,
+sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took
+it in her delicate hand and began to eat. My attention was so entirely
+absorbed by her that I could not apply myself to the task of determining
+whether this singular plant was or was not instinct with volition.
+
+I watched her, as she made her repast, with the most profound attention.
+The suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame;
+my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of
+the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the
+power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean and float with her
+through those grooves of purple and gold! While I was thus breathlessly
+following her every movement, she suddenly started, seemed to listen
+for a moment, and then cleaving the brilliant ether in which she was
+floating, like a flash of light, pierced through the opaline forest and
+disappeared.
+
+Instantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It
+seemed as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still
+before me, but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden
+disappearance? Had she a lover or a husband? Yes, that was the solution!
+Some signal from a happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues
+of the forest, and she had obeyed the summons.
+
+The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled
+me. I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I
+battled against the fatal conclusion--but in vain. It was so. I had no
+escape from it. I loved an animalcule.
+
+It is true that, thanks to the marvelous power of my microscope, she
+appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting
+aspect of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in
+the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and
+delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that?
+Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument it fell on a
+miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt
+all that could make my life lovely.
+
+Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical
+walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that
+filled my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life
+with the knowledge of her remote sympathy.
+
+It would be something to have established even the faintest personal
+link to bind us together--to know that at times, when roaming through
+these enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger who
+had broken the monotony of her life with his presence and left a gentle
+memory in her heart!
+
+But it could not be. No invention of which human intellect was capable
+could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast my
+soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant
+of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when
+closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from
+the room, and flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
+microscope, I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that
+contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded
+by its moderators, burning when I went to bed the night before. I found
+the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of pleasure animating
+her features, in the brilliant light which surrounded her. She tossed
+her lustrous golden hair over her shoulders with innocent coquetry. She
+lay at full length in the transparent medium, in which she supported
+herself with ease, and gamboled with the enchanting grace that the nymph
+Salmacis might have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest
+Hermaphroditus. I tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of
+reflection were developed. I lessened the lamplight considerably. By the
+dim light that remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across
+her face. She looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I
+flooded the stage of the microscope again with a full stream of light,
+and her whole expression changed. She sprang forward like some some
+substance deprived of all weight. Her eyes sparkled and her lips moved.
+Ah! if science had only the means of conducting and reduplicating
+sounds, as it does rays of light, what carols of happiness would then
+have entranced my ears! what jubilant hymns to Adonais would have
+thrilled the illumined air!
+
+I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Cabalis peopled his
+mystic world with sylphs-beautiful beings whose breath of life was
+lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
+purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had
+practically realized.
+
+How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely
+know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into the
+night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw
+no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my
+meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of
+any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form
+strengthened my passion--a passion that was always overshadowed by the
+maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she
+never, never could behold me!
+
+At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest and continual
+brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I determined
+to make some effort to wean myself from it. "Come," I said, "this is
+at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms
+which in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from female society has
+produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her with the beautiful
+women of your own world, and this false enchantment will vanish."
+
+I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the advertisement
+of a celebrated _danseuse_ who appeared nightly at Niblo's. The
+Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most beautiful as
+well as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly dressed and
+went to the theatre.
+
+The curtain drew up. The usual semicircle of fairies in white muslin
+were standing on the right toe around the enameled flower-bank of green
+canvas, on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a flute is
+heard. The fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all stand on
+the left toe, and the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She bounded
+forward amid thunders of applause, and, lighting on one foot, remained
+poised in the air. Heavens! was this the great enchantress that had
+drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels? Those heavy, muscular limbs,
+those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those
+crudely painted cheeks! Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid,
+expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of Animula?
+
+The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of
+her limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic
+efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it
+no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me,
+I rose from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina's
+_pas-de-fascination_ and abruptly quitted the house.
+
+I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of
+my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be
+impossible. I applied my eyes to the lens. Animula was there--but what
+could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place
+during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features
+of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs
+trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She
+was ill--ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I
+would have forfeited all claims to my human birthright if I could only
+have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console
+her from whom fate had forever divided me.
+
+I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that
+afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features
+contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The
+wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their
+hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched
+Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to
+wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not
+looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it;
+for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself.
+I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was
+still there--but, great heavens, the water drop had vanished! The awful
+truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute
+as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom,
+the one that contained Animula--and she was dying!
+
+I rushed again to the front of the lens and looked through. Alas! the
+last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away,
+and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim
+light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely
+shriveling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes that shone like
+heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now
+lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle
+of the blackening form--and I fainted.
+
+When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
+the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it.
+I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for many months.
+
+They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have
+neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I
+live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to
+lecture on optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me
+while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I
+suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense
+when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon
+among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien
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