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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
+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: Nightmare Tales
+
+Author: H. P. Blavatsky
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTMARE TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by eagkw, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Note: Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and
+bold with =signs=. Small capitals have been changed to all capitals.
+A more extensive transcriber’s note can be found at the end of this
+book.
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
+                   Point Loma, California]
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+  _By_
+
+
+  H. P. BLAVATSKY
+
+
+  The Aryan Theosophical Press
+  Point Loma, California,
+  U. S. A.
+  1907
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                               PAGE
+  A BEWITCHED LIFE                1
+
+  THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES         65
+
+  THE LUMINOUS SHIELD            81
+
+  FROM THE POLAR LANDS           95
+
+  THE ENSOULED VIOLIN           103
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A BEWITCHED LIFE
+
+(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had
+descended over the streets of A——, a small town on the Rhine, and was
+hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The
+greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day’s work,
+had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay their
+aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all
+was quiet in the deserted streets.
+
+I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and
+sickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still was
+everything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness
+seemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,
+as it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonous
+singing so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had
+listened to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into
+the sound of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when,
+suddenly changing its character, the ever growing “singing” merged
+into other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first
+scarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
+strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voice
+speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrously
+acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so pure
+that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.
+Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, to
+me, owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voice
+familiar for long years and ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mental
+or physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
+consolation.
+
+“Courage,” it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. “Think of the days
+passed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of
+Nature’s truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;
+and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
+narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shorten
+the hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder before you!”
+
+“Yonder” meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the other
+side of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own in
+almost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windows
+of my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gaze
+towards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget the
+agony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.
+
+Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,
+whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly
+uncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous
+light, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected
+a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky—first from outside,
+then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongating
+itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the street
+from the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed.
+As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite house
+itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms had
+changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew to
+be a Swiss châlet—into a study, whose old, dark walls were covered
+from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquated
+folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the center stood
+a large old-fashioned table, littered over with manuscripts and
+writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat an old man; a
+grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so thin, so pale,
+yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student’s
+lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheek-bones, as
+though they were carved out of ivory.
+
+As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon my
+pillows, the whole vision, châlet and study, desk, books and scribe,
+seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they approached nearer
+and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge of
+clouds across the street, they floated through the closed windows into
+my room and finally seemed to settle beside my bed.
+
+[Illustration: “I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A BRIGHT
+COLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALL
+VOICE OF THE QUILL.”]
+
+“Listen to what he thinks and is going to write”—said in soothing tones
+the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. “Thus you will hear a
+narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long sleepless
+hours, and even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!”—it
+added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic formula.
+
+I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention on the
+solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did not
+see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old man
+was writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered
+murmur of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught the
+indistinct words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figure
+before me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloud
+instead of writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my
+gaze at the old scribe’s face, I saw at a glance that his lips were
+compressed and motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his
+voice. Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand,
+I noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored spark
+that became instantaneously a sound, or—what is the same thing—it
+seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small voice
+of the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the time,
+perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will happen
+occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade, as Byron
+tells us, we
+
+    ... learn the language of another world ...
+
+However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my memory
+for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining them, for
+when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual, indelibly
+impressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.
+
+Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed to
+learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless, though
+the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for the
+occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, prove
+none the less interesting.
+
+
+I
+
+THE STRANGER’S STORY
+
+My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss cottages,
+hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down glaciers and a
+peak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, I
+returned—crippled mentally and physically—to die, if death would only
+have me. The pure invigorating air of my birth-place decided otherwise.
+I am still alive; perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts
+I have kept profoundly secret from all—a tale of horror I would rather
+hide than reveal. The reason for this unwillingness on my part is due
+to my early education, and to subsequent events that gave the lie to
+my most cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined to regard
+these events as providential: I, however, believe in no Providence, and
+yet am unable to attribute them to mere chance. I connect them as the
+ceaseless evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct causes,
+with one primary and fundamental cause, from which ensued all that
+followed. A feeble old man am I now, yet physical weakness has in no
+way impaired my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details of
+that terrible cause, which engendered such fatal results. It is these
+which furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence of
+one whom I fain would regard—oh, that I could do so!--as a creature
+born of my fancy, the evanescent production of a feverish, horrid
+dream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly and
+respected Being! It was that paragon of all the virtues who embittered
+my whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently out of the
+monotonous but secure groove of daily life, was the first to force upon
+me the certitude of a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horror
+to one already great enough.
+
+With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must
+interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how, if
+I could, would I obliterate that hated _Self_!
+
+Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the whole
+world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau
+and D’Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a
+thorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even
+pictured to myself any beings—least of all a Being—above or even
+outside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded
+everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of
+the physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing
+man has one, must be material. According to Origen’s definition,
+_incorporeus_[1]—the epithet he gave to his God—signifies a substance
+only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best,
+we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses
+cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make
+itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
+
+      [1] ἀσώματος.
+
+Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with a
+feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certain
+priests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latter
+feeling has never entirely abandoned me.
+
+Pascal, in the eighth Act of his “Thoughts,” confesses to a most
+complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I
+too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such
+extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
+words in which he tells us: “I have examined if this God of whom all
+the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look
+everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers
+me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude.” Nor
+have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely
+similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall
+I ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
+proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some
+persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. My
+whole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in such
+phenomena, and—I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoever
+means generated.
+
+On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost the
+greater part of my fortune, and resolved—for the sake of those I loved
+best, rather than for my own—to make another for myself. My elder
+sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer of
+a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.
+
+For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the
+confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I
+was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,
+in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
+Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy
+of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being
+called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the
+most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of
+the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in
+turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,
+Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.
+
+Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was not
+cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions
+on this subject altered. I derided the pretentions of the Japanese
+bonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
+Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers unknown
+to, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at all such
+ideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shun
+the pleasures of life, to put to rout one’s passions, to render oneself
+insensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order to acquire such
+chimerical powers—seemed supremely ridiculous in my eyes.
+
+On a day for ever memorable to me—a fatal day—I made the acquaintance
+of a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest, named Tamoora
+Hideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from that
+moment he became my best and most trusted friend. Notwithstanding my
+great and genuine regard for him, however, whenever a good opportunity
+was offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions, thereby
+very often hurting his feelings.
+
+But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist’s
+heart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even when
+they were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generally
+limited his replies to the “wait and see” kind of protest. Nor could he
+be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of the
+existence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms “atheism”
+and “scepticism” was beyond the comprehension of his otherwise
+extremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverential
+Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of sense
+should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modern
+science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full of Gods and
+spirits, dzins and demons. “Man is a spiritual being,” he insisted,
+“who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or punished in
+the between times.” The proposition that man is nothing else but a heap
+of organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused to
+admit that he was no better than “a stalking machine, a speaking head
+without a soul in it,” whose “thoughts are all bound by the laws of
+motion.” “For,” he argued, “if my actions were, as you say, prescribed
+beforehand, and I had no more liberty or free will to change the course
+of my action than the running waters of the river yonder, then the
+glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and demerit, would be foolishness
+indeed.”
+
+Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend’s ontology rested on
+the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied “just” Law of
+Retribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
+
+“We cannot,” said he paradoxically one day, “hope to live hereafter in
+the full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for it
+beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laugh
+not, friend of no faith,” he meekly pleaded, “but rather think and
+reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in Spirit
+during his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly hope to
+enjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his body, he
+is limited to that Spirit alone.”
+
+“What can you mean by life in Spirit?”—I inquired.
+
+“Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call _Tushita
+Devaloka_ (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for
+himself between two births, by the gradual transference on to that
+plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
+through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain.”...
+
+“How absurd! And how can man do this?”
+
+“Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods, will
+enable him to do so.”
+
+“And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, I
+suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes of
+him after the death of his body?” was my mocking question.
+
+“He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his
+consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best—immediate
+rebirth; at worst—the state of _avitchi_, a mental hell. Yet one need
+not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to
+the hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach Spirit.”
+
+“How so? Even when disbelieving in it?”—I rejoined.
+
+“Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one’s nature room for
+doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it
+but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this will
+prove sufficient for the purpose.”
+
+“You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.
+Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?”
+
+“There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that some
+unknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existence
+of which you think you have reasons to deny, is the ‘spiritual plane’
+of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads you
+towards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and look
+within. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you have
+established an everlasting connexion between your consciousness and the
+temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate the
+fact of your having entered it. And according to the character and the
+variety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live in it
+after your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh.”
+
+“What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness—if such a
+thing exists—to do with the temple?”
+
+“It has everything to do with it,” solemnly rejoined the old man.
+“There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the temple
+of spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alone
+survive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish
+in the Ocean of Mâyâ.”
+
+Amused at the idea of living outside one’s body, I urged on my old
+friend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning, the venerable man
+willingly consented.
+
+Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzi-Onene, a Buddhist
+monastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibet
+and China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the
+sect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among the
+many erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected and
+allied with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the
+doctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
+my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby to
+cure me of my infidelity.
+
+No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly
+involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his
+ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world—as
+for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the
+“spiritual plane” he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself
+worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given
+several hours daily to “contemplation.” Thus _he knew_ (?!) that after
+he had laid aside his mortal casket, “a mere illusion,” he explained—he
+would in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling
+of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or _ought to have
+had_—only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane had
+been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages of
+the laborer would prove proportionate.
+
+“But suppose the laborer, as in the example you have just brought
+forward in my case, should have no more than opened the temple door out
+of mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his
+foot therein again. What then?”
+
+“Then,” he answered, “you would have only this short minute to record
+in your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafter
+records and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in our
+spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of reverence
+at the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been harboring
+in your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual life
+would be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record, save
+the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper.”
+
+“How then could it be repeated?”—I insisted, highly amused. “What do
+you suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?”
+
+“In that case,” he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word—“in
+that case, _you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the temple
+door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would
+seem to you an eternity_.”
+
+This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, so
+grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almost
+inextinguishable fit of laughter.
+
+My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result
+of his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected such
+hilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me
+with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.
+
+“Pray excuse my laughter,” I apologized. “But really, now, you cannot
+seriously mean to tell me that the ‘spiritual state’ you advocate and
+so firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do in
+life?”
+
+“Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling
+the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition
+of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual
+plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and
+no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of
+_Soul-Vision_, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be
+blamed.... What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual
+state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition
+of every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had been
+barren, there could be no results expected—save the repetition of that
+act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds
+and finally made to see certain truths.” And passing through the usual
+Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.
+
+Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learned since, how
+little would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!
+
+But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I felt
+for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas about
+an after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men of
+supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence
+for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land.
+Their claims to the “miraculous” were simply odious to my notions. To
+hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest
+of all the business men I had come across in the East—mentioning these
+followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands,
+and affirmations of their possessing “great” and “wonderful” gifts,
+was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And
+who were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculous
+pretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these “holy beggars” who, as I
+then thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains
+and on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the better to afford no
+chance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them in
+their own dens? Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies
+who sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those who
+sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life,
+admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do accept
+pupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and
+that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity
+of their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest
+negation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils,
+classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and
+I went so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoism
+or _Sin-Syu_, “faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods,” that
+is, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, is
+a kind of worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more
+miserably absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knaves
+of other sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritual
+teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of
+Society, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and
+the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men
+in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart, nor
+do they pass any ordination—at any rate none known to outsiders. And as
+they claim publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress
+being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply in
+the world’s opinion professors and students of occult and spiritual
+sciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the least
+suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
+
+Years passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable scepticism grew
+stronger and waxed fiercer every day. I have already mentioned an elder
+and much-beloved sister, my only surviving relative. She had married
+and had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded her with feelings
+more filial than fraternal, and her children were as dear to me as
+might have been my own. At the time of the great catastrophe that in
+the course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune, and
+my mother break her heart, she it was, that sweet big sister of mine,
+who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined
+family. Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for whom she
+attempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded,
+she had renounced her own happiness. She sacrificed herself and the man
+she loved, by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to help
+our father and chiefly myself by her undivided devotion. And, oh, how I
+loved and reverenced her, time but strengthening this earliest family
+affection! They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a true
+friend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject, utter—whether
+consciously or unconsciously—the greatest calumny and lie. To say that
+a materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot love
+as a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.
+
+There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but these are found
+only occasionally in men who are even more selfish than they are
+sceptical, or vulgarly worldly. But when a man who is kindly disposed
+in his nature, for no selfish motives but because of reason and love
+of truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only strengthened
+in his family affections, and in his sympathies with his fellow men.
+All his emotions, all the ardent aspirations towards the unseen and
+unreachable, all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly
+bestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God, become now centered
+with tenfold force upon his loved ones and mankind. Indeed, the
+atheist’s heart alone—
+
+                          ... can know,
+    What secret tides of still enjoyment flow
+    When brothers love....
+
+It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice my
+comfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness, the felicity
+of her who had been more than a mother to me. I was a mere youth
+when I left home for Hamburg. There, working with all the desperate
+earnestness of a man who has but one noble object in view—to relieve
+suffering, and help those whom he loves—I very soon secured the
+confidence of my employers, who raised me in consequence to the high
+post of trust I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward in
+life was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for my
+sake, and to help them in their struggle for existence. So purifying
+and unselfish was this affection of mine for her that when it came
+to be shared among her children, instead of losing in intensity by
+such division, it seemed only to grow the stronger. Born with the
+potentiality of the warmest family affection in me, the devotion for my
+sister was so great, that the thought of burning that sacred fire of
+love before any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered my
+head. This was the only church I recognized, the only church wherein I
+worshipped at the altar of holy family affection. In fact this large
+family of eleven persons, including her husband, was the only tie
+that attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine years, had
+I crossed the ocean with the sole object of seeing and pressing these
+dear ones to my heart. I had no other business in the West; and having
+performed this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to work and
+toil for them. For their sake I remained a bachelor, that the wealth I
+might acquire should go undivided to them alone.
+
+We had always corresponded as regularly as the long transit of the then
+very irregular service of the mail-boats would permit. But suddenly
+there came a break in my letters from home. For nearly a year I
+received no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless, more
+apprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I looked for a letter, a
+simple message; and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence were
+fruitless.
+
+“Friend,” said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my only confidant,
+“Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and you will feel at rest.”
+
+Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I could
+command under the provocation. But, as steamer after steamer came in
+without a word of news, I felt a despair which daily increased in depth
+and fixity. This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, a
+morbid desire to learn—the worst as I then thought. I struggled hard
+with the feeling, but it had the best of me. Only a few months before
+a complete master of myself—I now became an abject slave to fear. A
+fatalist of the school of D’Holbach, I, who had always regarded belief
+in the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophical
+happiness, and as having the most advantageous influence over human
+weaknesses, _I_ felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!
+I had gone so far as to forget the first principle of my doctrine—the
+only one calculated to calm our sorrows, to inspire us with a useful
+submission, namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blind
+destiny, with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be
+overwhelmed—the doctrine that _all is necessary_. Yes; forgetting
+this, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious longing, a stupid,
+disgraceful desire to learn—if not futurity, at any rate that which was
+taking place at the other side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterly
+modified, my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and like a
+weak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my mind to the very verge
+of lunacy in an attempt to look—as I had been told one could sometimes
+do—beyond the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,
+inexplicable silence!
+
+One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable Bonze, Tamoora,
+appeared on the verandah of my low wooden house. I had not visited
+him for many days, and he had come to know how I was. I took the
+opportunity to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I regarded
+with most affectionate respect. With equivocal taste—for which I
+repented almost before the words had been pronounced—I inquired of
+him why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when he
+might have learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogating
+a Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first; but after keenly
+scrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly remarked that he could only
+insist upon what he had advised before. Only one of that holy order
+could give me consolation in my present state.
+
+From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to challenge him to
+prove his assertions. I defied—I said to him—any and every one of his
+alleged magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinking
+of, and what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered that my
+desire could be easily satisfied. There was a Yamabooshi two doors from
+me, visiting a sick Sinto. He would fetch him—if I only said the word.
+
+I said it and _from the moment of its utterance my doom was sealed_.
+
+How shall I find words to describe the scene that followed! Twenty
+minutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed, an old
+Japanese, uncommonly tall and majestic for one of that race, pale,
+thin and emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I had
+expected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned an air of
+calm and dignified composure, the attitude of one who knows his moral
+superiority, and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those who
+fail to recognize it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,
+which I put to him one after another, with feverish eagerness, he made
+no reply; but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at a
+delirious patient. From the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt—or
+shall I say, saw—as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin silvery
+thread, shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeply
+sunk in the yellow old face. It seemed to penetrate into my brain
+and heart like an arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom every
+thought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and very soon the
+double sensation became intolerable.
+
+To break the spell I defied him to tell me what he had found in my
+thoughts. Calmly came the correct answer—Extreme anxiety for a female
+relative, her husband and children, who were inhabiting a house the
+correct description of which he gave as though he knew it as well
+as myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend, the Bonze, to
+whose indiscretions, I thought, I was indebted for the quick reply.
+Remembering however that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearance
+of my sister’s house, that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and,
+as friends, faithful to death—I felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atone
+for it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could
+tell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of mine.
+The foreigner—was the reply—would never believe in the words, or trust
+to the knowledge of any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell
+him, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later, and the
+inquirer find himself as miserable as before. There was but one means;
+and that was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and
+thus learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placed
+by a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
+
+I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and pretenders to
+clairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had, therefore, nothing
+against the process itself. Even in the midst of my never-ceasing
+mental agony, I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the
+operation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I silently bowed
+consent.
+
+
+III
+
+PSYCHIC MAGIC
+
+The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, and
+finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who darts
+his Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a
+little bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetable
+paper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with which
+he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the _Naiden_ character—a
+peculiar style of written language used only for religious and mystical
+purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his clothes a small
+round mirror of steel of extraordinary brilliancy, and placing it
+before my eyes, asked me to look into it.
+
+I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently used
+in the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that under
+the direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in them the
+Daij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of their
+fate. I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit,
+who would answer my queries. What happened, however, was something of
+quite a different character.
+
+No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental squeamishness,
+produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position, touched the
+mirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of the
+hand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to “sit in the seat of
+the scorner” and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous point
+of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain, for an instant
+paralyzing its activity—
+
+                                           ... that fear
+    When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?
+
+No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuading
+myself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the nature
+of which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, that
+crept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein
+a sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly
+serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of the
+hand I dropped the—I blush to write the adjective—“magic” mirror, and
+could not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I was
+reclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle between
+some undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to look into
+the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, the
+ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It was finally
+so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own defiant
+intensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table near the
+settee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I read the
+words, “The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy.”
+This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto held me back from
+what I regarded as a degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me to
+challenge my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk and prepared
+to look into it.
+
+While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a few
+words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and suspicious
+glance at both. I was wrong once more.
+
+“The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at the
+same time a warning,” remarked the Bonze. “If you are willing to see
+for yourself now, you will have—under the penalty of _seeing for ever,
+in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, and
+that against your will or inclination_—to submit to a regular course of
+purification, after you have learned what you want through the mirror.”
+
+“What is this course, and what have I to promise?” I asked defiantly.
+
+“It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to the
+process, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to hold
+himself responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an
+_irresponsible_ seer of you. Will you do so, friend?”
+
+“There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything”—I
+sneeringly replied, adding under my breath—“something I doubt a good
+deal, so far.”
+
+“Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain with
+yourself,” was the solemn answer.
+
+I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which was
+remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just _seven minutes
+after five_.
+
+“Define well in your mind _what_ you would see and learn,” said the
+“conjuror,” placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructing
+me how to use them.
+
+His instructions were received by me with more impatience than
+gratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless I
+replied, while fixing the mirror:
+
+“_I desire but one thing—to learn the reason or reasons why my sister
+has so suddenly ceased writing to me._”...
+
+Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the two
+witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide the
+point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
+the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this process
+lasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able to
+settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every
+detail of the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror with
+the left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic characters
+between the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden I
+seemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. The
+passage from the active waking state to one that I could compare with
+nothing I had ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes
+had ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight
+of the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless
+distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaning
+forward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation of
+an involuntary rush forward, of _snapping_ off, so to say, from my
+place—I had almost said from my body. And, then, while every one of
+my other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I thought,
+unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid glimpse than they had
+ever had in reality, of my sister’s new house at Nuremberg, which I had
+never visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery with which
+I had never been very familiar. Together with this, and while feeling
+in my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing consciousness—dying
+persons must feel so, no doubt—the very last, vague thought, so weak
+as to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, _very_
+ridiculous.... This _feeling_—for such it was rather than a thought—was
+interrupted, suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear _mental
+vision_ (I cannot characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which
+I regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on the
+settee, dead to all intents and purposes, but still staring with the
+cold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with
+his two emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over _its_
+white face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt
+at that instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going,
+in thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old
+men, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a
+reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from “me.” A
+few more grotesque, distorted shadows before “my” sight; and, with a
+last feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise _who then was I
+now, since I was not that corpse_—a great veil of darkness fell over
+me, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.
+
+
+IV
+
+A VISION OF HORROR
+
+How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had once
+more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that
+I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strange
+sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on my
+part, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself to
+me was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and
+stifling air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of the
+presence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, to
+repeat my last sentence, “I desire but one thing: to learn the reason
+or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me”—but the
+only words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, “_to learn_,”
+and these, instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back to
+me in my own voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me.
+In short, they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
+
+One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
+Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myself
+standing—actually standing—underground, as it seemed. I was compactly
+and thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left,
+with earth, and _in_ the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemed
+quite immaterial and transparent to _my senses_. I did not realize
+for one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that
+_seeming_ fact! One second more, one short instant, and I perceived—oh,
+inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then, although I
+perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far more clearly
+than ever I had done before, I did not seem to be touched in any other
+way by what I saw. Yes—I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a plain
+unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch of the pauper,
+in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly saw a hideous,
+grinning skull, a man’s skeleton, mutilated and broken in many of its
+parts, as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the
+defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture. “Who can
+it be?”—I thought.
+
+At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice—_my_
+voice ... “_the reason or reasons why_” ... it said; as though these
+words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which
+it had just repeated the two words “to learn.” It sounded near, and
+yet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea that
+the long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions and
+discoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
+almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of
+the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself
+in my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,
+broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice....
+
+Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, and
+to me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined together
+one to the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, and
+I recognized in these disfigured remains—with some surprise, but not
+a trace of feeling at the sight—my sister’s dead husband, my own
+brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. “How was it,
+and how did he come to die such a terrible death?”—I asked myself. To
+put oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantly
+solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when, as if in a
+panorama, I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl’s death, in all
+its horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one of
+which, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Here
+he is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect of
+more lucrative employment from his principal, examining and trying in a
+wood-sawing factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America.
+He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten
+a screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel
+in full motion, and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his
+limbs half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the
+mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead,
+mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of palpitating flesh
+and blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap to
+the hospital, hear the brutally given order that the messengers of
+death should stop on their way at the house of the widow and orphans.
+I follow them, and find the unconscious family quietly assembled
+together. I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferent
+at the sight, only feeling highly interested in the coming scene. My
+heart, my feelings, even my personality, seemed to have disappeared, to
+have been left behind, to belong to somebody else.
+
+There “I” stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastly
+news. I realize clearly, without one moment’s hesitation or mistake,
+the effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly, following and
+recording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner process
+that takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing not one single
+point.
+
+As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear
+the long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud of
+the living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I follow
+with curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation
+in her brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,
+precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibers,
+the instantaneous change of color in the cephalic extremity of the
+nervous system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright
+red and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden flash of
+a phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its sudden
+extinction followed by darkness—complete darkness in the region of
+memory—as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human shape,
+oozes out suddenly from the top of the head, expands, loses its form
+and scatters. And I say to myself: “This is insanity; life-long,
+incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed
+or extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the tabernacle for
+ever, ejected from it by the terrible force of the sudden blow.... The
+link between the animal and the divine essence is broken.”... And as
+the unfamiliar term “divine” is mentally uttered _my_ “THOUGHT”—laughs.
+
+Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing
+emphatically and close by me the words ... “_why my sister has so
+suddenly ceased writing_.”... And before the two final words “_to
+me_” have completed the sentence, I see a long series of sad events,
+immediately following the catastrophe.
+
+I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunatic
+asylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger children
+admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy
+of fifteen, and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
+strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carries
+away my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the events
+with all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to the
+smallest detail, with the utmost coolness.
+
+For, mark well: when I use such expressions as “horrors,” etc., they
+are to be understood as an after-thought. During the whole time of the
+events described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My
+feelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external senses; it was
+only after “coming back” that I realized my irretrievable losses to
+their full extent.
+
+Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days, owing to
+sad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been told by anyone
+at that time, that man could act and think and feel, irrespective of
+his brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and to this day,
+for me, incomprehensible power, _he_ could be transported _mentally_,
+thousands of miles away from his body, there to witness not only
+present but also past events, and remember these by storing them in
+his memory—I would have proclaimed that man a madman. Alas, I can do
+so no longer, for I have become myself that “madman.” Ten, twenty,
+forty, a hundred times during the course of this wretched life of mine,
+have I experienced and lived over such moments of existence, _outside
+of my body_. Accursed be that hour when this terrible power was first
+awakened in me! I have not even the consolation left of attributing
+such glimpses of events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see
+that which exists not in the realm they belong to. My visions have
+proved _invariably correct_. But to my narrative of woe.
+
+I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her new
+Israelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the one
+that had sent me “swimming” through the bowels of the earth, as I had
+thought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I fixed
+upon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial showed seven
+minutes and a half past five!... I had thus passed through these most
+terrible experiences, which it takes me hours to narrate, _in precisely
+half a minute of time_!
+
+But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief instant I
+recollected nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the time I
+had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi’s
+hand and this second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I was just
+opening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi with his experiment, when
+the full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning-like
+into my brain. Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as though
+the whole creation were crushing me under its weight. For one moment I
+remained speechless, the picture of human ruin amid a world of death
+and desolation. My heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; and
+a hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever.
+
+
+V
+
+RETURN OF DOUBTS
+
+Then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt arose in my
+mind, which forthwith grew into a fierce desire of denying the truth of
+what I had seen. A stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as
+an empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained mind, took
+possession of me. Yes; it was but a lying vision, an idiotic cheating
+of my own senses, suggesting pictures of death and misery which had
+been evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental depression.
+
+“How could I see all that I have seen in less than half a minute?”—I
+exclaimed. “The theory of dreams, the rapidity with which the material
+changes on which our ideas in vision depend, are excited in the
+hemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for the long series of
+events I have seemed to experience. In dream alone can the relations
+of space and time be so completely annihilated. The Yamabooshi is for
+nothing in this disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that which
+has been sown by myself, and, by using some infernal drug, of which his
+tribe have the secret, he has contrived to make me lose consciousness
+for a few seconds and see that vision—as lying as it is horrid. Avaunt
+all such thoughts, I believe them not. In a few days there will be a
+steamer sailing for Europe.... I shall leave to-morrow!”
+
+This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud, regardless of the
+presence of my respected friend the Bonze, Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi.
+The latter was standing before me in the same position as when he
+placed the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at me calmly, I should
+perhaps say looking _through_ me, and in dignified silence. The Bonze,
+whose kind countenance was beaming with sympathy, approached me as he
+would a sick child, and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tears
+in his eyes, said: “Friend, you must not leave this city before you
+have been completely purified of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins
+(spirits), who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the
+places it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner Self must be closed
+against their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore, my son, and
+allow the holy Master yonder, to purify you at once.”
+
+But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused. “The sap of
+reason” could no longer “quench the fire of passion,” and at that
+moment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is a face
+I can never recall to my memory without genuine feeling; his, a name
+I will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that ever
+memorable hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I felt
+almost a hatred for the kind, good old man, I could not forgive him his
+interference in the present event. Hence, for all answer, therefore, he
+received from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on my part against
+the idea that I could ever regard the vision I had had, in any other
+light save that of an empty dream, and his Yamabooshi as anything
+better than an impostor. “I will leave to-morrow, had I to forfeit my
+whole fortune as a penalty”—I exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
+
+“You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so before the
+holy man has shut every entrance in you against intruders ever on
+the watch and ready to enter the open door,” was the answer. “The
+Daij-Dzins will have the best of you.”
+
+I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more brutally
+phrased inquiry about the _fees_ I was expected to give the Yamabooshi,
+for his experiment with me.
+
+“He needs no reward,” was the reply. “The order he belongs to is the
+richest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for they are
+above all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him not, the good man
+who came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering, and to
+relieve you of mental agony.”
+
+But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom. The spirit of
+rebellion and pride had taken possession of me, and made me disregard
+every feeling of personal friendship, or even of simple propriety.
+Luckily for me, on turning round to order the mendicant monk out of my
+presence, I found he had gone.
+
+I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure to fear
+at having been detected and understood.
+
+Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognize
+the Yamabooshi’s power, and that the peace of my whole life was
+departing with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail.
+Even the fell demon of my long fears—uncertainty—was now entirely
+overpowered by that fiend scepticism—the silliest of all. A dull,
+morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses,
+and a determined will to regard the whole vision as a fancy of my
+overwrought mind, had taken firm hold of me.
+
+“My mind,” I argued, “what is it? Shall I believe with the
+superstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and gray
+matter is indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and see
+independently of my physical senses? Never! As well believe in the
+planetary ‘intelligences’ of the astrologer, as in the ‘Daij-Dzins’ of
+my credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confess
+one’s belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that these
+worthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals,
+as to give one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to
+have guided my ‘soul’ in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh at
+the absurd idea. I regard it as a personal insult to the intellect
+and rational reasoning powers of a man, to speak of invisible
+creatures, ‘_subjective_ intelligences,’ and all that kind of insane
+superstition.” In short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his
+protests, and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever.
+
+Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman, doing
+all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of my
+having gone suddenly mad. But his admirable forbearance proved more
+than equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once more, for the
+sake of my whole future, to submit to certain “necessary purificatory
+rites.”
+
+“Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing by the air-pump
+of wholesome unbelief, than in the dim fog of silly superstition,”
+I argued, paraphrazing Richter’s remark. “I will not believe,” I
+repeated; “but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my sister
+and her family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe.”
+
+This final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. His
+earnest prayer not to depart before I had seen the Yamabooshi once
+more, received no attention from me.
+
+“Friend of a foreign land!”—he cried, “I pray that you may not repent
+of your unbelief and rashness. May the ‘Holy One’ (Kwan-On, the Goddess
+of Mercy) protect you from the Dzins! For, since you refuse to submit
+to the process of purification at the hands of the holy Yamabooshi,
+he is powerless to defend you from the evil influences evoked by your
+unbelief and defiance of truth. But let me, at this parting hour, I
+beseech you, let me, an older man who wishes you well, warn you once
+more and persuade you of things you are still ignorant of. May I speak?”
+
+“Go on and have your say,” was the ungracious assent. “But let me warn
+you, in my turn, that nothing you can say can make of me a believer in
+your disgraceful superstitions.” This was added with a cruel feeling of
+pleasure in bestowing one more needless insult.
+
+But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others.
+Never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting words, the
+pitying, remorseful look on his face when he found that it was, indeed,
+all to no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference he had only
+led me to my destruction.
+
+“Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time,” he began, “learn that
+unless the holy and venerable man, who, to relieve your distress,
+opened your ‘soul vision,’ is permitted to complete his work, your
+future life will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguard
+you against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character.
+Unless you consent to it of your own free will, however, you will have
+to be left in the power of _Forces_ which will harass and persecute you
+to the verge of insanity. Know that the development of ‘Long Vision’
+(clairvoyance)—which is accomplished _at will_ only by those for whom
+the Mother of Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no secrets—must, in the
+case of the beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins (elemental
+spirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence wicked. Know also that,
+while the Arihat, ‘the destroyer of the enemy,’ who has subjected and
+made of these creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he who
+has no power over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in your
+great pride and ignorance, but listen further. During the time of the
+vision and while the inner perceptions are directed towards the events
+they seek, the Daij-Dzin has the seer—when, like yourself, he is an
+inexperienced tyro—entirely in its power; and for the time being _that
+seer is no longer himself_. He partakes of the nature of his ‘guide.’
+The Daij-Dzin, which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance
+vile, making of him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself.
+Bereft of his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence during
+the time of such connection, he will feel no human emotions, neither
+pity nor fear, love nor mercy.”
+
+“Hold!” I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought
+back to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed
+my sister’s despair and sudden loss of reason in my “hallucination.”
+“Hold!... But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any
+sense in your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerous
+why have advised the experiment at all?”—I added mockingly.
+
+“It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could have resulted from
+it, had you kept your promise to submit to purification,” was the sad
+and humble reply. “I wished you well, my friend, and my heart was nigh
+breaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment is harmless
+when directed by _one who knows_, and becomes dangerous only when the
+final precaution is neglected. It is the ‘Master of Visions,’ he who
+has opened an entrance into your soul, who has to close it by using the
+Seal of Purification against any further and deliberate ingress of....”
+
+“The ‘Master of Visions,’ forsooth!” I cried, brutally interrupting
+him, “say rather the Master of Imposture!”
+
+The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful to
+behold that I perceived I had gone too far; but it was too late.
+
+“Farewell, then!” said the old bonze, rising; and after performing the
+usual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora left the house in dignified
+silence.
+
+
+VI
+
+I DEPART—BUT NOT ALONE
+
+Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerable
+friend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for ever
+memorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more than
+irreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he so justly
+respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and pride
+was too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment of
+remorse. What was it that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath,
+that when, for one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposed
+grievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed myself back into a
+kind of artificial fury against him. He had only accomplished what he
+had been expected to do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so,
+but it was I myself who had deprived him of the possibility of doing
+more, even for my own protection, if I might believe the Bonze—a man
+whom I knew to be thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at
+having been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, or
+was it the fear of remorse that made me rake together, in my heart,
+during those evil hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult to
+that same suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked,
+“is like the heart in which it grows:...
+
+                         ... if proud and gloomy,
+    It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost,
+    Weeps only tears of blood.”
+
+Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort which
+caused me to remain so obdurate, and led me to excuse, under the plea
+of terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had heaped
+upon the head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest. However,
+it was now too late in the day to recall the words of offence I had
+uttered; and all I could do was to promise myself the satisfaction of
+writing him a friendly letter, as soon as I reached home. Fool, blind
+fool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was! So sure did I
+feel, that my vision was due merely to some trick of the Yamabooshi,
+that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in writing to the
+Bonze that I had been right in answering his sad words of parting
+with an incredulous smile, as my sister and family were all in good
+health—happy!
+
+I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember his
+words of warning!
+
+From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived a
+great change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to the
+mental depression I had struggled against for so many months. During
+the day I very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes,
+losing sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights were
+disturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at times horrible. Good sailor I
+certainly was; and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the ocean
+as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt a strange
+giddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers assumed at
+such times the most grotesque appearances. Thus, a young German I used
+to know well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old
+father, whom we had laid in the little burial place of the European
+colony some three years before. We were talking on deck of the defunct
+and of a certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner’s head
+appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A thick
+greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and upon
+his healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim old head I
+had myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another occasion,
+as the captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had helped to
+secure and lodge in jail, I saw near him the yellow, villainous face
+of a man answering to his description. I kept silence about such
+hallucinations; but as they became more and more frequent, I felt very
+much disturbed, though still attributing them to natural causes, such
+as I had read about in medical books.
+
+One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and loud cry of distress.
+It was a woman’s voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of terror
+and of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on land,
+in a strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperately
+struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her in
+her own room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door,
+I saw listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
+expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognized
+it: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dream
+I had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foul
+crime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant.... But who was the
+victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized the
+situation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my own
+child-niece.
+
+But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the nature of that
+despair born of affection that fills one’s heart, at the sight of a
+wrong done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing but
+a manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the
+weak and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seized
+the wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with powerful
+grasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to feel my hand.
+The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful
+arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunny
+locks, felled the child to the ground. It was with a loud cry of the
+indignation of a stranger, not with that of a tigress defending her
+cub, that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle him.
+I then remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow myself, I was
+grasping but another shadow!....
+
+My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer. They
+were attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take anyone into my
+confidence; but, from that day forward, my life became a long series of
+mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness
+of some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whether
+past, present or even future—as I ascertained later on. It was as
+though some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of making
+me go through the vision of everything that was bestial, malignant
+and hopeless, in this world of misery. No radiant vision of beauty
+or virtue ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe and
+wretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of
+murder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I was
+brought face to face with the vilest results of man’s passions, the
+most terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings.
+
+Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he spoke of
+Daij-Dzins to whom I left “an ingress” “a door open” in me? Nonsense!
+There must be some physiological, abnormal change in me. Once at
+Nuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken by
+my fears—I dared not hope for no misfortune at all—these meaningless
+visions will disappear as they came. The very fact that my fancy
+follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of human
+passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof to me, of their
+unreality.
+
+“If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter, the object
+of the physical senses; and if perception with its modes is only the
+result of the organization of the brain, then should we be naturally
+attracted but to the material, the earthly”.... I thought I heard the
+familiar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections, and repeating
+an often used argument of his in his discussions with me.
+
+“There are two planes of visions before men,” I again heard him say,
+“the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the efflux from
+the eternal light; and the plane of restless, ever changing matter, the
+light in which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe.”
+
+
+VII
+
+ETERNITY IN A SHORT DREAM
+
+In those days I could hardly bring myself to realize, even for a
+moment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind of spirits, whether good
+or bad. I now understood, if I did not believe, what was meant by the
+term, though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove
+some physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To fortify my
+unbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my memory all the arguments
+used against a faith in such superstitions, that I had ever read or
+heard. I recalled the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm reasoning
+of Hume, and I repeated to myself _ad nauseam_ the words of Rousseau,
+who said that superstition, “the disturber of Society,” could never
+be too strongly attacked. “Why should the sight, the phantasmagoria,
+rather”—I argued—“of that which we know in a waking sense to be false,
+come to affect us at all?” Why should—
+
+    Names, whose sense we see not
+    Fray us with things that be not?
+
+One day the old captain was narrating to us the various superstitions
+to which sailors were addicted; a pompous English missionary remarked
+that Fielding had declared long ago that “superstition renders a man a
+fool,”—after which he hesitated for an instant, and abruptly stopped.
+I had not taken any part in the general conversation; but no sooner
+had the reverend speaker relieved himself of the quotation, than I saw
+in that halo of vibrating light, which I now noticed almost constantly
+over every human head on the steamer, the words of Fielding’s next
+proposition—“and _scepticism makes him mad_.”
+
+I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend to seership,
+that they often see the thoughts of people traced in the aura of those
+present. Whatever “aura” may mean with others, I had now a personal
+experience of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently disgusted
+with the discovery! I—a _clairvoyant_! a new horror added to my life,
+an absurd and ridiculous gift developed, which I shall have to conceal
+from all, feeling ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy. At
+this moment my hatred to the Yamabooshi, and even to my venerable old
+friend, the Bonze, knew no bounds. The former had evidently by his
+manipulations over me while I was lying unconscious, touched some
+unknown physiological spring in my brain, and by loosing it had called
+forth a faculty generally hidden in the human constitution; and it was
+the Japanese priest who had introduced the wretch into my house!
+
+But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and could be of no
+avail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and in a few
+more days we should be at Hamburg. Then would my doubts and fears be
+set at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that although
+clairvoyance, as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot, may
+have some truth in it, the discernment of such events at a distance,
+as I had _dreamed of_, was an impossibility for human faculties.
+Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart was sick with
+fear, and full of the blackest presentiments; I _felt_ that my doom
+was closing. I suffered terribly, my nervous and mental prostration
+becoming intensified day by day.
+
+The night before we entered port I had a dream.
+
+I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,
+whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as “I,”
+realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its own
+extinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preserved
+heat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease its
+activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several minutes.
+Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my dream that
+while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf “no mortal e’er
+repassed,” its consciousness was still in the gray twilight, the
+first shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my THOUGHT wrapped, as I
+believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality, was
+watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches of its own
+dissolution, _i.e._, of its _annihilation_. “I” was hastening to
+record my last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal oblivion
+should envelope me, before I had time to feel and _enjoy_, the great,
+the supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions were
+true, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of conscious
+being. Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Huge
+gray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first, then with
+accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with an almost
+vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that motion had taken place only
+for purposes of brewing darkness, the object once reached, it slackened
+its speed, and as the darkness became gradually transformed into
+intense blackness, it ceased altogether. There was nothing now within
+my immediate perceptions, but that fathomless black Space, as dark as
+pitch: to me it appeared as limitless and as silent as the shoreless
+Ocean of Eternity upon which Time, the progeny of man’s brain, is for
+ever gliding, but which it can never cross.
+
+Dream is defined by Cato as “but the image of our hopes and fears.”
+Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream of mine,
+calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt
+rather relieved at the thought—probably owing to my recent mental
+suffering—that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I loved,
+of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The constant
+anguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heart
+for many a long and weary month, had now become unbearable; and
+if as Seneca thinks, death is but “the ceasing to be what we were
+before,” it was better that I should die. The body is dead; “I,” its
+consciousness—that which is all that remains of me now, for a few
+moments longer—am preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get
+weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time, until the longed
+for oblivion envelopes me completely in its cold shroud. Sweet is the
+magic hand of Death, the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamless
+is sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcome
+guest.... A calm and peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of the
+Ocean of life, whose breakers lash in vain the rock-bound shores of
+Death. Happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of its
+black gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about by the
+angry waves of sentient life. Moored in it for evermore, needing no
+longer either sail or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then,
+O Death, at this tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,
+having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I now readily
+give up!...
+
+While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I bent
+over, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding darkness
+oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied I found
+in it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet ... how
+very strange! If real, final Death takes place in our consciousness;
+if after the bodily death, “I” and my conscious perceptions are
+one—how is it that these perceptions do not become weaker, why does
+my _brain_-action seem as vigorous as ever now ... that I am _de
+facto_ dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety, the “heavy
+heart” so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it even seems to become
+worse ... unspeakably so!... How long it takes for full oblivion to
+arrive!... Ah, here’s my body again!... Vanished out of sight for a
+second or two, it reappears before me once more.... How white and
+ghastly it looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead, since “I,”
+its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy that we still
+are, that we live and think, disconnected from our creator and its
+ideating cell.
+
+Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progress
+of dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal on
+the brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its cranial
+cavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of the
+skull, and even _touched the brain-matter_.... How, or with _whose
+hands_, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the slimy,
+intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me, in that
+dream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirely
+congealed and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a change
+that would no longer permit any molecular action, it became impossible
+for me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself.
+Here was I,—or my consciousness, which is all one—standing apparently
+entirely disconnected from my brain which could no longer function....
+But I had no time left for reflection. A new and most extraordinary
+change in my perceptions had taken place and now engrossed my whole
+attention.... What _does_ this signify?...
+
+The same darkness was around me as before, a black, impenetrable space,
+extending in every direction. Only now, right before me, in whatever
+direction I was looking, moving with me which way soever I moved,
+there was a gigantic round clock; a disk, whose large white face shone
+ominously on the ebony-black background. As I looked at its huge dial,
+and at the pendulum moving to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, as
+if its swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles pointing to
+_seven minutes past five_. “The hour at which my torture had commenced
+at Kioto!” I had barely found time to think of the coincidence, when,
+to my unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the same, the
+identical, process that I had been made to experience on that memorable
+and fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly through the earth;
+I found myself once more in the pauper’s grave and recognized my
+brother-in-law in the mangled remains; I witnessed his terrible death;
+entered my sister’s house; followed her agony, and saw her go mad. I
+went over the same scenes without missing a single detail of them. But,
+alas! I was no longer iron-bound in the calm indifference that had then
+been mine, and which in that first vision had left me as unfeeling to
+my great misfortune as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My
+mental tortures were now becoming beyond description and well-nigh
+unbearable. Even the settled despair, the never ceasing anxiety I was
+constantly experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream and
+in the face of this repetition of visions and events, as an hour of
+darkened sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered in
+this wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction of
+the survival of man’s consciousness after death—for in that dream I
+firmly believed that my body was dead—added the most terrifying of all!
+
+The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene,
+I saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not
+of long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the
+colossal disk at—_seven minutes and a-half past five_ o’clock. But,
+before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved slowly
+backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and—O cursed
+fate!... I found myself driven into a repetition of the same series
+over again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard, and
+suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed through every
+mental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to see the fatal dial
+and its needle—after what appeared to me an eternity—moved, as before,
+only half a minute forward. I beheld it, with renewed terror, moving
+back again, and felt myself propelled forward anew. And so it went
+on, and on, and on, time after time, in what seemed to me an endless
+succession, a series which never had any beginning, nor would it ever
+have an end....
+
+Worst of all; my consciousness, my “I,” had apparently acquired the
+phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplating
+itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in
+half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various events
+of my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilar
+circumstances; though predominant over all was my _spiritual_
+experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous _fugue_ in _Don Giovanni_,
+the heart-rending notes of Elvira’s _aria_ of despair ring high above,
+but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
+seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes,
+the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision,
+the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of my
+despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes
+and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was living
+through again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was a
+maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoria
+from real life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time,
+examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my sister’s
+husband; following with the same indifference the effects of the
+news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and feeling _at the
+same time_ hell-torture for these very events, as when I returned to
+consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical discourses of the
+Bonze, every word of which I heard and understood, and was trying
+to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a youth, hearing my
+mother’s and my sweet sister’s voices, admonishing me and teaching duty
+to all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering at
+his aged father who thanks me for having saved a “soul” yet unprepared
+to meet his Maker.
+
+“Speak of _dual_ consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!”—I cried, in
+one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me physical
+also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killed
+a dozen living men; “speak of your psychological and physiological
+experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and book-learning!
+Here am I to give you the lie....” And now I was reading the works and
+holding converse with learned professors and lecturers, who had led
+me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing the impossibility of
+consciousness divorced from its brain, I was shedding tears of blood
+over the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible than
+all: I knew, _as only a liberated consciousness can know_, that all I
+had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was seeing and hearing
+over and over again now, was true in every point and detail, that it
+was a long string of ghastly and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
+
+For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention on
+the needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and
+was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that
+consciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be
+my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
+experience how the condemned sinners would feel—“were not eternal
+damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever
+progressing Universe”—I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; at
+this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness—now my synonym
+for “I”—had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims,
+of denying all their propositions, all—save ITSELF.... No; I denied the
+independent nature of my consciousness no longer, for I knew it now
+to be such. But is it _eternal_ withal? O thou incomprehensible and
+terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?—since
+there is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when didst thou
+first appear, if thou art not a part of the cold body lying yonder?
+And whither dost thou lead me, who am thyself, and shall our thought
+and fancy have an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomable
+REALITY, and impenetrable MYSTERY! Oh, I would fain annihilate thee....
+“Soul-Vision”!--who speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says
+that I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man, after all.... I
+deny this. My Soul, my vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired
+with my body, with the gray matter of my brain. This “I” of mine, this
+consciousness, is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in
+which the Bonze felt so anxious I should believe may be true.... Why
+not? Is not the flower born year after year from the same root? Hence
+this “I” once separated from its brain, losing its balance, and calling
+forth such a host of visions ... before reincarnating....
+
+I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I was
+watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of the
+depths of its white face, saying: “In this case, I fear, _you would
+only have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,
+during a period which, however short, would seem to you an
+eternity_.”...
+
+The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of my
+old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; and
+I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint with
+terror.
+
+
+VIII
+
+A TALE OF WOE
+
+We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who could
+hardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes I started
+for Nuremberg.
+
+Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the
+correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse than
+any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to
+the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible
+tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killed
+under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidly
+sinking towards her end; my niece—the sweet flower of nature’s fairest
+work—dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little children dead of a
+contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew at sea,
+no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace, scattered;
+and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolation
+and dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I sank
+helpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which rose before me
+all at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The last thing
+I heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a remark of the
+Burgmeister: “Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the city
+authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of coming home
+to take charge of your young relatives, we might have placed them
+elsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No one knew that
+the children had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers and
+had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively strangers in
+Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardly
+have expected anything else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow.”
+
+It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have saved
+my young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect I
+had not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly
+advice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities some
+weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was all
+this, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyance
+and clairaudience—the possibility of which I had so long denied—that
+brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the censure
+of my fellow-creatures, but I could never escape the stings of my
+conscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart—no, not as long as I
+lived. I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts, my early
+education, I cursed myself, and the whole world....
+
+For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I had
+a duty to perform to the dead and to the living. But my sister once
+rescued from the pauper’s asylum, placed under the care of the best
+physicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and
+the Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodged
+in jail—my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a
+week after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac,
+helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I lay
+between life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of the
+best physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and—to my
+life-long sorrow—they proclaimed me saved.
+
+I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to drag the loathsome
+burden of life henceforth alone, and in constant remorse; hoping for
+no help or remedy on earth, and still refusing to believe in the
+possibility of anything better than a short survival of consciousness
+beyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added only one more
+drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They were hardly soothed by the
+immediate return, during the first days of my convalescence, of those
+unwelcome and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality I
+could deny no more. Alas the day! they were no longer in my sceptical,
+blind mind—
+
+    The children of an idle brain
+    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
+
+but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferings
+of my fellow creatures, of my best friends.... Thus I found myself
+doomed, whenever I was left for a moment alone, to the helpless
+torture of a chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night,
+as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself led to my
+sister’s bedside, forced to watch there hour after hour, and see the
+silent disintegration of her wasted organism; to witness and feel the
+sufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or
+convey to her perceptions. But there was something still more horrible
+to barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had to look, by
+day, at the childish innocent face of my young niece, so sublimely
+simple and guileless in her pollution; and to witness, by night, how
+the full knowledge and recollection of her dishonor, of her young life
+now for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as soon as she was
+asleep. These dreams took an objective form to me, as they had done
+on the steamer; I had to live them over again, night after night,
+and feel the same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the
+reality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our bodies
+lies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis which may contain
+in its turn the butterfly—the symbol of the soul—I no longer remained
+indifferent, as of yore, to what I witnessed in my Soul-life. Something
+had suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy cocoon.
+Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the identification of
+my inner nature with a Daij-Dzin; my visions arose in consequence of a
+direct personal psychic development, the fiendish creatures only taking
+care that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature.
+Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my dying sister’s emaciated body,
+not a thrill of horror in my niece’s restless sleep at the recollection
+of the crime perpetrated upon her, an innocent child, but found a
+responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The deep fountain of sympathetic
+love and sorrow had gushed out from the physical heart, and was now
+loudly echoed by the awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had I
+to drain the cup of misery to the very dregs! Woe is me, it was a daily
+and nightly torture! Oh, how I mourned over my proud folly; how I was
+punished for having neglected to avail myself at Kioto of the proffered
+purification, for now I had come to believe even in the efficacy of
+the latter. The Daij-Dzin had indeed obtained control over me; and the
+fiend had let loose all the dogs of hell upon his victim....
+
+At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor insane
+martyr dropped into her dark, and now welcome grave, leaving behind
+her, but for a few short months, her young, her first-born, daughter.
+Consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame. Hardly a year
+after my arrival, I was left alone in the whole wide world, my only
+surviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his sea-faring
+career.
+
+And now, the sequel of my sad, sad story is soon told. A wreck, a
+prematurely old man, looking at thirty as though sixty winters had
+passed over my doomed head, and owing to the never-ceasing visions,
+myself daily on the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate
+resolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the Yamabooshi. I
+would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man, and would not
+leave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised, the
+Frankenstein with whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would not
+part, through my insolent pride and unbelief.
+
+Three months later I was in my Japanese home again, and I at once
+sought out my old, venerable Bonze, Tamoora Hideyeri, I now implored
+him to take me without an hour’s delay, to the Yamabooshi, the innocent
+cause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the last, the supreme
+seal on my doom and tenfold intensified my despair. The Yamabooshi had
+left the country for lands unknown! He had departed one fine morning
+into the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to custom, would be
+absent, unless natural death shortened the period, for no less than
+seven years!...
+
+In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to other learned
+Yamabooshis; and though well aware how useless it was in my case to
+seek efficient cure from any other “adept,” my excellent old friend
+did everything he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was to
+no purpose, and the canker-worm of my life’s despair could not be
+thoroughly extricated. I found from them that not one of these learned
+men could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of clairvoyant
+obsession. It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them to
+show futurity, or things that had already come to pass, who alone had
+full control over them. With kind sympathy, which I had now learned
+to appreciate, the holy men invited me to join the group of their
+disciples, and learn from them what I could do for myself. “Will alone,
+faith in your own soul powers, can help you now,” they said. “But it
+may take several years to undo even a part of the great mischief;”
+they added. “A Daij-Dzin is easily dislodged in the beginning; if left
+alone, he takes possession of a man’s nature, and it becomes almost
+impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim.”
+
+Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do, I
+gratefully assented, doing my best to believe in all that these holy
+men believed in, and yet ever failing to do so in my heart. The demon
+of unbelief and all-denial seemed rooted in me more firmly even than
+the Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was not to
+lose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I proceeded without delay
+to free myself from the world and my commercial obligations, in order
+to live for several years an independent life. I settled my accounts
+with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm.
+Notwithstanding considerable financial losses resulting from such a
+precipitate liquidation, I found myself, after closing the accounts,
+a far richer man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no longer
+any attraction for me, now that I had no one to share it with, no one
+to work for. Life had become a burden; and such was my indifference to
+my future, that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew—in case
+he should return alive from his sea voyage—I should have neglected
+entirely even a small provision for myself, had not my native partner
+interfered and insisted upon my making it. I now recognized with
+Lao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,
+as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any tempest. Wealth
+is a weak anchor in days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatal
+counsellor. Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid aside
+for myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to assure me a small
+income for life, or if I ever left my new friends and instructors.
+Having settled my earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings at
+Kioto, I joined the “Masters of the Long Vision,” who took me to their
+mysterious abode. There I remained for several years, studying very
+earnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing no one but a few of
+the members of our religious community.
+
+Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then, and
+many a secret folio from the library of Tzion-ene have I devoured,
+obtaining thereby mastery over several kinds of invisible beings
+of a lower order. But the great secret of power over the terrible
+Daij-Dzin I could not get. It remains in the possession of a very
+limited number of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the great
+majority of the Yamabooshis themselves being ignorant how to obtain
+such mastery over the dangerous Elemental. One who would reach such
+power of control would have to become entirely identified with the
+Yamabooshis, to accept their views and beliefs, and to attain the
+highest degree of Initiation. Very naturally, I was found unfit to
+join the Fraternity, owing to many insurmountable reasons besides my
+congenital and ineradicable scepticism, though I tried hard to believe.
+Thus, partially relieved of my affliction and taught how to conjure the
+unwelcome visions away, I still remained, and do remain to this day,
+helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now and then.
+
+It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted position
+of an independent Seer and Adept that I reluctantly gave up any further
+trial. Nothing had been heard of the holy man, the first innocent cause
+of my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who occasionally visited
+me in my retreat, either could not, or would not, inform me of the
+whereabouts of the Yamabooshi. When, therefore, I had to give up all
+hope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift, I resolved
+to return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the rest of my life.
+With this object in view, I purchased through my late partners the
+Swiss _châlet_ in which my hapless sister and I were born, where I had
+grown up under her care, and selected it for my future hermitage.
+
+When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer which took me back
+to my fatherland, the good old Bonze tried to console me for my
+disappointments. “My son,” he said, “regard all that happened to you
+as your _Karma_—a just retribution. No one who has subjected himself
+willingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin can ever hope to become a _Rahat_
+(an Adept), a high-souléd Yamabooshi—unless immediately purified.
+At best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose and to
+successfully fight off the fiend. _Like a scar left after a poisonous
+wound, the trace of a Daij-Dzin can never be effaced from the Soul
+until purified by a new rebirth._ Withal, feel not dejected, but be of
+good cheer in your affliction, since it has led you to acquire true
+knowledge, and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise rejected
+with contempt. And of this priceless knowledge, acquired through
+suffering and personal efforts—no Daij-Dzin can ever deprive you.
+Fare thee well, then, and may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen of
+Heaven, afford you comfort and protection.”
+
+We parted, and since then I have led the life of an anchorite, in
+constant solitude and study. Though still occasionally afflicted,
+I do not regret the years I have passed under the instruction of
+the Yamabooshis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received. Of
+the priest Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affection
+and respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day of his
+death; an event which, with all its to me painful details, I had the
+unthanked-for privilege of witnessing across the seas, at the very hour
+in which it occurred.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES
+
+A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY[2]
+
+      [2] This story is given from the narrative of an eye-witness,
+      a Russian gentleman, very pious, and fully trustworthy.
+      Moreover, the facts are copied from the police records of P——.
+      The eyewitness in question attributes it, of course, partly to
+      divine interference and partly to the Evil One.—H. P. B.
+
+
+In one of the distant governments of the Russian empire, in a small
+town on the borders of Siberia, a mysterious tragedy occurred more
+than thirty years ago. About six versts from the little town of P——,
+famous for the wild beauty of its scenery, and for the wealth of its
+inhabitants—generally proprietors of mines and of iron foundries—stood
+an aristocratic mansion. Its household consisted of the master, a rich
+old bachelor and his brother, who was a widower and the father of
+two sons and three daughters. It was known that the proprietor, Mr.
+Izvertzoff, had adopted his brother’s children, and, having formed an
+especial attachment for his eldest nephew, Nicolas, he had made him the
+sole heir of his numerous estates.
+
+Time rolled on. The uncle was getting old, the nephew was coming of
+age. Days and years had passed in monotonous serenity, when, on the
+hitherto clear horizon of the quiet family, appeared a cloud. On an
+unlucky day one of the nieces took it into her head to study the
+zither. The instrument being of purely Teutonic origin, and no teacher
+of it residing in the neighborhood, the indulgent uncle sent to St.
+Petersburg for both. After diligent search only one Professor could be
+found willing to trust himself in such close proximity to Siberia. It
+was an old German artist, who, sharing his affections equally between
+his instrument and a pretty blonde daughter, would part with neither.
+And thus it came to pass that one fine morning the old Professor
+arrived at the mansion, with his music box under one arm and his fair
+Munchen leaning on the other.
+
+From that day the little cloud began growing rapidly; for every
+vibration of the melodious instrument found a responsive echo in the
+old bachelor’s heart. Music awakens love, they say, and the work begun
+by the zither was completed by Munchen’s blue eyes. At the expiration
+of six months the niece had become an expert zither player, and the
+uncle was desperately in love.
+
+One morning, gathering his adopted family around him, he embraced them
+all very tenderly, promised to remember them in his will, and wound up
+by declaring his unalterable resolution to marry the blue-eyed Munchen.
+After this he fell upon their necks and wept in silent rapture. The
+family, understanding that they were cheated out of the inheritance,
+also wept; but it was for another cause. Having thus wept, they
+consoled themselves and tried to rejoice, for the old gentleman was
+sincerely beloved by all. Not all of them rejoiced, though. Nicolas,
+who had himself been smitten to the heart by the pretty German, and
+who found himself defrauded at once of his belle and of his uncle’s
+money, neither rejoiced nor consoled himself, but disappeared for a
+whole day.
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Izvertzoff had given orders to prepare his traveling
+carriage on the following day, and it was whispered that he was going
+to the chief town of the district, at some distance from his home,
+with the intention of altering his will. Though very wealthy, he had
+no superintendent on his estate, but kept his books himself. The same
+evening after supper, he was heard in his room, angrily scolding his
+servant, who had been in his service for over thirty years. This man,
+Ivan, was a native of northern Asia, from Kamschatka; he had been
+brought up by the family in the Christian religion, and was thought to
+be very much attached to his master. A few days later, when the first
+tragic circumstance I am about to relate had brought all the police
+force to the spot, it was remembered that on that night Ivan was drunk;
+that his master, who had a horror of this vice had paternally thrashed
+him, and turned him out of his room, and that Ivan had been seen
+reeling out of the door, and had been heard to mutter threats.
+
+On the vast domain of Mr. Izvertzoff there was a curious cavern, which
+excited the curiosity of all who visited it. It exists to this day, and
+is well known to every inhabitant of P——. A pine forest, commencing
+a few feet from the garden gate, climbs in steep terraces up a long
+range of rocky hills, which it covers with a broad belt of impenetrable
+vegetation. The grotto leading into the cavern, which is known as the
+“Cave of the Echoes,” is situated about half a mile from the site
+of the mansion, from which it appears as a small excavation in the
+hill-side, almost hidden by luxuriant plants, but not so completely
+as to prevent any person entering it from being readily seen from the
+terrace in front of the house. Entering the Grotto, the explorer finds
+at the rear a narrow cleft; having passed through which he emerges into
+a lofty cavern, feebly lighted through fissures in the vaulted roof,
+fifty feet from the ground. The cavern itself is immense, and would
+easily hold between two and three thousand people. A part of it, in the
+days of Mr. Izvertzoff, was paved with flagstones, and was often used
+in the summer as a ball-room by picnic parties. Of an irregular oval,
+it gradually narrows into a broad corridor, which runs for several
+miles underground, opening here and there into other chambers, as large
+and lofty as the ball-room, but, unlike this, impassable otherwise than
+in a boat, as they are always full of water. These natural basins have
+the reputation of being unfathomable.
+
+On the margin of the first of these is a small platform, with several
+mossy rustic seats arranged on it, and it is from this spot that the
+phenomenal echoes, which give the cavern its name, are heard in all
+their weirdness. A word pronounced in a whisper, or even a sigh, is
+caught up by endless mocking voices, and instead of diminishing in
+volume, as honest echoes do, the sound grows louder and louder at
+every successive repetition, until at last it bursts forth like the
+repercussion of a pistol shot, and recedes in a plaintive wail down the
+corridor.
+
+On the day in question, Mr. Izvertzoff had mentioned his intention of
+having a dancing party in this cave on his wedding day, which he had
+fixed for an early date. On the following morning, while preparing for
+his drive, he was seen by his family entering the grotto, accompanied
+only by his Siberian servant. Half-an-hour later, Ivan returned to the
+mansion for a snuff-box, which his master had forgotten in his room,
+and went back with it to the cave. An hour later the whole house was
+startled by his loud cries. Pale and dripping with water, Ivan rushed
+in like a madman, and declared that Mr. Izvertzoff was nowhere to be
+found in the cave. Thinking he had fallen into the lake, he had dived
+into the first basin in search of him and was nearly drowned himself.
+
+The day passed in vain attempts to find the body. The police filled the
+house, and louder than the rest in his despair was Nicolas, the nephew,
+who had returned home only to meet the sad tidings.
+
+A dark suspicion fell upon Ivan, the Siberian. He had been struck by
+his master the night before, and had been heard to swear revenge. He
+had accompanied him alone to the cave, and when his room was searched,
+a box full of rich family jewelry, known to have been carefully kept
+in Mr. Izvertzoff’s apartment, was found under Ivan’s bedding. Vainly
+did the serf call God to witness that the box had been given to him
+in charge by his master himself, just before they proceeded to the
+cave; that it was the latter’s purpose to have the jewelry reset, as
+he intended it for a wedding present to his bride; and that he, Ivan,
+would willingly give his own life to recall that of his master, if
+he knew him to be dead. No heed was paid to him, however, and he was
+arrested and thrown into prison upon a charge of murder. There he was
+left, for under the Russian law a criminal cannot—at any rate, he could
+not in those days—be sentenced for a crime, however conclusive the
+circumstantial evidence, unless he confessed his guilt.
+
+After a week had passed in useless search, the family arrayed
+themselves in deep mourning; and, as the will as originally drawn
+remained without a codicil, the whole of the property passed into the
+hands of the nephew. The old teacher and his daughter bore this sudden
+reverse of fortune with true Germanic phlegm, and prepared to depart.
+Taking again his zither under one arm, the old man was about to lead
+away his Munchen by the other, when the nephew stopped him by offering
+himself as the fair damsel’s husband in the place of his departed
+uncle. The change was found to be an agreeable one, and, without much
+ado, the young people were married.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten years rolled away, and we meet the happy family once more at the
+beginning of 1859. The fair Munchen had grown fat and vulgar. From
+the day of the old man’s disappearance, Nicolas had become morose and
+retired in his habits, and many wondered at the change in him, for now
+he was never seen to smile. It seemed as if his only aim in life were
+to find out his uncle’s murderer, or rather to bring Ivan to confess
+his guilt. But the man still persisted that he was innocent.
+
+An only son had been born to the young couple, and a strange child
+it was. Small, delicate, and ever ailing, his frail life seemed to
+hang by a thread. When his features were in repose, his resemblance
+to his uncle was so striking that the members of the family often
+shrank from him in terror. It was the pale shriveled face of a man
+of sixty upon the shoulders of a child nine years old. He was never
+seen either to laugh or to play, but, perched in his high chair, would
+gravely sit there, folding his arms in a way peculiar to the late Mr.
+Izvertzoff; and thus he would remain for hours, drowsy and motionless.
+His nurses were often seen furtively crossing themselves at night, upon
+approaching him, and not one of them would consent to sleep alone with
+him in the nursery. His father’s behavior towards him was still more
+strange. He seemed to love him passionately, and at the same time to
+hate him bitterly. He seldom embraced or caressed the child, but, with
+livid cheek and staring eye, he would pass long hours watching him, as
+the child sat quietly in his corner, in his goblin-like, old-fashioned
+way.
+
+The child had never left the estate, and few outside the family knew of
+his existence.
+
+About the middle of July, a tall Hungarian traveler, preceded by a
+great reputation for eccentricity, wealth and mysterious powers,
+arrived at the town of P—— from the North, where, it was said, he had
+resided for many years. He settled in the little town, in company
+with a Shaman or South Siberian magician, on whom he was said to make
+mesmeric experiments. He gave dinners and parties, and invariably
+exhibited his Shaman, of whom he felt very proud, for the amusement of
+his guests. One day the notables of P—— made an unexpected invasion of
+the domains of Nicolas Izvertzoff, and requested the loan of his cave
+for an evening entertainment. Nicolas consented with great reluctance,
+and only after still greater hesitancy was he prevailed upon to join
+the party.
+
+The first cavern and the platform beside the bottomless lake glittered
+with lights. Hundreds of flickering candles and torches, stuck in
+the clefts of the rocks, illuminated the place and drove the shadows
+from the mossy nooks and corners, where they had crouched undisturbed
+for many years. The stalactites on the walls sparkled brightly, and
+the sleeping echoes were suddenly awakened by a joyous confusion of
+laughter and conversation. The Shaman, who was never lost sight of by
+his friend and patron, sat in a corner, entranced as usual. Crouched
+on a projecting rock, about midway between the entrance and the water,
+with his lemon-yellow, wrinkled face, flat nose, and thin beard, he
+looked more like an ugly stone idol than a human being. Many of the
+company pressed around him and received correct answers to their
+questions, the Hungarian cheerfully submitting his mesmerized “subject”
+to cross-examination.
+
+Suddenly one of the party, a lady, remarked that it was in that very
+cave that old Mr. Izvertzoff had so unaccountably disappeared ten years
+before. The foreigner appeared interested, and desired to learn more of
+the circumstances, so Nicolas was sought amid the crowd and led before
+the eager group. He was the host and he found it impossible to refuse
+the demanded narrative. He repeated the sad tale in a trembling voice,
+with a pallid cheek, and tears were seen glittering in his feverish
+eyes. The company were greatly affected, and encomiums upon the
+behavior of the loving nephew in honoring the memory of his uncle and
+benefactor were freely circulating in whispers, when suddenly the voice
+of Nicolas became choked, his eyes started from their sockets, and with
+a suppressed groan, he staggered back. Every eye in the crowd followed
+with curiosity his haggard look, as it fell and remained riveted upon a
+weazened little face, that peeped from behind the back of the Hungarian.
+
+“Where do you come from? Who brought you here, child?” gasped out
+Nicolas, as pale as death.
+
+“I was in bed, papa; this man came to me, and brought me here in his
+arms,” answered the boy simply, pointing to the Shaman, beside whom
+he stood upon the rock, and who, with his eyes closed, kept swaying
+himself to and fro like a living pendulum.
+
+“That is very strange,” remarked one of the guests, “for the man has
+never moved from his place.”
+
+“Good God! what an extraordinary resemblance!” muttered an old resident
+of the town, a friend of the lost man.
+
+“You lie, child!” fiercely exclaimed the father. “Go to bed; this is no
+place for you.”
+
+“Come, come,” interposed the Hungarian, with a strange expression on
+his face, and encircling with his arm the slender childish figure; “the
+little fellow has seen the double of my Shaman, which roams sometimes
+far away from his body, and has mistaken the phantom for the man
+himself. Let him remain with us for a while.”
+
+At these strange words the guests stared at each other in mute
+surprise, while some piously made the sign of the cross, spitting
+aside, presumably at the devil and all his works.
+
+“By-the-bye,” continued the Hungarian with a peculiar firmness of
+accent, and addressing the company rather than any one in particular;
+“why should we not try, with the help of my Shaman, to unravel the
+mystery hanging over the tragedy? Is the suspected party still lying
+in prison? What? he has not confessed up to now? This is surely very
+strange. But now we will learn the truth in a few minutes! Let all keep
+silent!”
+
+He then approached the Tehuktchene, and immediately began his
+performance without so much as asking the consent of the master of
+the place. The latter stood rooted to the spot, as if petrified with
+horror, and unable to articulate a word. The suggestion met with
+general approbation, save from him; and the police inspector, Col. S——,
+especially approved of the idea.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the mesmerizer in soft tones, “allow
+me for this once to proceed otherwise than in my general fashion. I
+will employ the method of native magic. It is more appropriate to this
+wild place, and far more effective as you will find, than our European
+method of mesmerization.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer, he drew from a bag that never left his
+person, first a small drum, and then two little phials—one full of
+fluid, the other empty. With the contents of the former he sprinkled
+the Shaman, who fell to trembling and nodding more violently than ever.
+The air was filled with the perfume of spicy odors, and the atmosphere
+itself seemed to become clearer. Then, to the horror of those present,
+he approached the Tibetan, and taking a miniature stiletto from his
+pocket, he plunged the sharp steel into the man’s forearm, and drew
+blood from it, which he caught in the empty phial. When it was half
+filled, he pressed the orifice of the wound with his thumb, and stopped
+the flow of blood as easily as if he had corked a bottle, after which
+he sprinkled the blood over the little boy’s head. He then suspended
+the drum from his neck, and, with two ivory drum-sticks, which were
+covered with magic signs and letters, he began beating a sort of
+_réveille_, to drum up the spirits, as he said.
+
+The bystanders, half-shocked and half-terrified by these extraordinary
+proceedings, eagerly crowded round him, and for a few moments a dead
+silence reigned throughout the lofty cavern. Nicolas, with his face
+livid and corpse-like, stood speechless as before. The mesmerizer had
+placed himself between the Shaman and the platform, when he began
+slowly drumming. The first notes were muffled, and vibrated so softly
+in the air that they awakened no echo, but the Shaman quickened his
+pendulum-like motion and the child became restless. The drummer then
+began a slow chant, low, impressive and solemn.
+
+As the unknown words issued from his lips, the flames of the candles
+and torches wavered and flickered, until they began dancing in rhythm
+with the chant. A cold wind came wheezing from the dark corridors
+beyond the water, leaving a plaintive echo in its trail. Then a sort
+of nebulous vapor, seeming to ooze from the rocky ground and walls,
+gathered about the Shaman and the boy. Around the latter the aura was
+silvery and transparent, but the cloud which enveloped the former was
+red and sinister. Approaching nearer to the platform the magician beat
+a louder roll upon the drum, and this time the echo caught it up with
+terrific effect! It reverberated near and far in incessant peals; one
+wail followed another, louder and louder, until the thundering roar
+seemed the chorus of a thousand demon voices rising from the fathomless
+depths of the lake. The water itself, whose surface, illuminated by
+many lights, had previously been smooth as a sheet of glass, became
+suddenly agitated, as if a powerful gust of wind had swept over its
+unruffled face.
+
+Another chant, and a roll of the drum, and the mountain trembled to its
+foundation with the cannon-like peals which rolled through the dark
+and distant corridors. The Shaman’s body rose two yards in the air,
+and nodding and swaying, sat, self-suspended like an apparition. But
+the transformation which now occurred in the boy chilled everyone, as
+they speechlessly watched the scene. The silvery cloud about the boy
+now seemed to lift him, too, into the air; but, unlike the Shaman, his
+feet never left the ground. The child began to grow, as though the work
+of years was miraculously accomplished in a few seconds. He became
+tall and large, and his senile features grew older with the ageing
+of his body. A few more seconds, and the youthful form had entirely
+disappeared. It was totally absorbed in another individuality, and to
+the horror of those present who had been familiar with his appearance,
+this individuality was that of old Mr. Izvertzoff, and on his temple
+was a large gaping wound, from which trickled great drops of blood.
+
+This phantom moved towards Nicolas, till it stood directly in front
+of him, while he, with his hair standing erect, with the look of a
+madman gazed at his own son, transformed into his uncle. The sepulchral
+silence was broken by the Hungarian, who, addressing the child phantom,
+asked him in solemn voice:
+
+“In the name of the great Master, of him who has all power, answer the
+truth, and nothing but the truth. Restless spirit, hast thou been lost
+by accident, or foully murdered?”
+
+The specter’s lips moved, but it was the echo which answered for them
+in lugubrious shouts: “Murdered! murdered!! mur-der-ed!!!”
+
+“Where? How? By whom?” asked the conjuror.
+
+The apparition pointed a finger at Nicolas and, without removing its
+gaze or lowering its arm, retreated backwards slowly towards the lake.
+At every step it took, the younger Izvertzoff, as if compelled by some
+irresistible fascination, advanced a step towards it, until the phantom
+reached the lake, and the next moment was seen gliding on its surface.
+It was a fearful, ghostly scene!
+
+When he had come within two steps of the brink of the watery abyss, a
+violent convulsion ran through the frame of the guilty man. Flinging
+himself upon his knees, he clung to one of the rustic seats with a
+desperate clutch, and staring wildly, uttered a long piercing cry of
+agony. The phantom now remained motionless on the water, and bending
+its extended finger, slowly beckoned him to come. Crouched in abject
+terror, the wretched man shrieked until the cavern rang again and
+again: “I did not.... No, I did not murder you!”
+
+Then came a splash, and now it was the boy who was in the dark water,
+struggling for his life, in the middle of the lake, with the same
+motionless stern apparition brooding over him.
+
+“Papa! papa! Save me.... I am drowning!” ... cried a piteous little
+voice amid the uproar of the mocking echoes.
+
+“My boy!” shrieked Nicolas, in the accents of a maniac, springing to
+his feet. “My boy! Save him! Oh, save him!... Yes, I confess.... I am
+the murderer.... It is I who killed him!”
+
+Another splash, and the phantom disappeared. With a cry of horror the
+company rushed towards the platform; but their feet were suddenly
+rooted to the ground, as they saw amid the swirling eddies a whitish
+shapeless mass holding the murderer and the boy in tight embrace, and
+slowly sinking into the bottomless lake.
+
+On the morning after these occurrences, when, after a sleepless night,
+some of the party visited the residence of the Hungarian gentleman,
+they found it closed and deserted. He and the Shaman had disappeared.
+Many are among the old inhabitants of P—— who remember him; the Police
+Inspector, Col. S——, dying a few years ago in the full assurance that
+the noble traveler was the devil. To add to the general consternation
+the Izvertzoff mansion took fire on that same night and was completely
+destroyed. The Archbishop performed the ceremony of exorcism, but
+the locality is considered accursed to this day. The Government
+investigated the facts, and—ordered silence.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUMINOUS SHIELD
+
+
+We were a small and select party of light-hearted travelers. We had
+arrived at Constantinople a week before from Greece, and had devoted
+fourteen hours a day ever since to toiling up and down the steep
+heights of Pera, visiting bazaars, climbing to the tops of minarets and
+fighting our way through armies of hungry dogs, the traditional masters
+of the streets of Stamboul. Nomadic life is infectious, they say, and
+no civilization is strong enough to destroy the charm of unrestrained
+freedom when it has once been tasted. The gipsy cannot be tempted
+from his tent, and even the common tramp finds a fascination in his
+comfortless and precarious existence, that prevents him taking to any
+fixed abode and occupation. To guard my spaniel Ralph from falling a
+victim to this infection, and joining the canine Bedouins that infested
+the streets, was my chief care during our stay in Constantinople. He
+was a fine fellow, my constant companion and cherished friend. Afraid
+of losing him, I kept a strict watch over his movements; for the
+first three days, however, he behaved like a tolerably well-educated
+quadruped, and remained faithfully at my heels. At every impudent
+attack from his Mahomedan cousins, whether intended as a hostile
+demonstration or an overture of friendship, his only reply would be to
+draw in his tail between his legs, and with an air of dignified modesty
+seek protection under the wing of one or other of our party.
+
+As he had thus from the first shown so decided an aversion to bad
+company, I began to feel assured of his discretion, and by the end
+of the third day I had considerably relaxed my vigilance. This
+carelessness on my part, however, was soon punished, and I was made to
+regret my misplaced confidence. In an unguarded moment he listened to
+the voice of some four-footed syren, and the last I saw of him was the
+end of his bushy tail, vanishing round the corner of a dirty, winding
+little back street.
+
+Greatly annoyed, I passed the remainder of the day in a vain search
+after my dumb companion. I offered twenty, thirty, forty francs reward
+for him. About as many vagabond Maltese began a regular chase, and
+towards evening we were invaded in our hotel by the whole troop, every
+man of them with a more or less mangy cur in his arms, which he tried
+to persuade me was my lost dog. The more I denied, the more solemnly
+they insisted, one of them actually going down on his knees, snatching
+from his bosom an old corroded metal image of the Virgin, and swearing
+a solemn oath that the Queen of Heaven herself had kindly appeared to
+him to point out the right animal. The tumult had increased to such
+an extent that it looked as if Ralph’s disappearance was going to be
+the cause of a small riot, and finally our landlord had to send for
+a couple of Kavasses from the nearest police station, and have this
+regiment of bipeds and quadrupeds expelled by main force. I began to
+be convinced that I should never see my dog again, and I was the
+more despondent since the porter of the hotel, a semi-respectable
+old brigand, who, to judge by appearances, had not passed more than
+half-a-dozen years at the galleys, gravely assured me that all my pains
+were useless, as my spaniel was undoubtedly dead and devoured too by
+this time, the Turkish dogs being very fond of their more toothsome
+English brothers.
+
+All this discussion had taken place in the street at the door of the
+hotel, and I was about to give up the search for that night at least,
+and enter the hotel, when an old Greek lady, a Phanariote who had been
+hearing the fracas from the steps of a door close by, approached our
+disconsolate group and suggested to Miss H——, one of our party, that we
+should inquire of the dervishes concerning the fate of Ralph.
+
+“And what can the dervishes know about my dog?” said I, in no mood to
+joke, ridiculous as the proposition appeared.
+
+“The holy men know all, Kyrea (Madam),” said she, somewhat
+mysteriously. “Last week I was robbed of my new satin pelisse, that
+my son had just brought me from Broussa, and, as you all see, I have
+recovered it and have it on my back now.”
+
+“Indeed? Then the holy men have also managed to metamorphose your new
+pelisse into an old one by all appearances,” said one of the gentlemen
+who accompanied us, pointing as he spoke to a large rent in the back,
+which had been clumsily repaired with pins.
+
+“And that is just the most wonderful part of the whole story,” quietly
+answered the Phanariote, not in the least disconcerted. “They showed me
+in the shining circle the quarter of the town, the house, and even the
+room in which the Jew who had stolen my pelisse was just about to rip
+it up and cut it into pieces. My son and I had barely time to run over
+to the Kalindjikoulosek quarter, and to save my property. We caught the
+thief in the very act, and we both recognized him as the man shown to
+us by the dervishes in the magic moon. He confessed the theft and is
+now in prison.”
+
+Although none of us had the least comprehension of what she meant
+by the magic moon and the shining circle, and were all thoroughly
+mystified by her account of the divining powers of the “holy men,” we
+still felt somehow satisfied from her manner that the story was not
+altogether a fabrication, and since she had at all events apparently
+succeeded in recovering her property through being somehow assisted by
+the dervishes, we determined to go the following morning and see for
+ourselves, for what had helped her might help us likewise.
+
+The monotonous cry of the Muezzins from the tops of the minarets had
+just proclaimed the hour of noon as we, descending from the heights
+of Pera to the port of Galata, with difficulty managed to elbow our
+way through the unsavory crowds of the commercial quarter of the town.
+Before we reached the docks we had been half deafened by the shouts and
+incessant ear-piercing cries and the Babel-like confusion of tongues.
+In this part of the city it is useless to expect to be guided by either
+house numbers, or names of streets. The location of any desired place
+is indicated by its proximity to some other more conspicuous building,
+such as a mosque, bath or European shop; for the rest, one has to trust
+to Allah and his prophet.
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that we finally
+discovered the British ship-chandler’s store, at the rear of which
+we were to find the place of our destination. Our hotel guide was as
+ignorant of the dervishes’ abode as we were ourselves; but at last a
+small Greek, in all the simplicity of primitive undress, consented for
+a modest copper backsheesh to lead us to the dancers.
+
+When we arrived we were shown into a vast and gloomy hall that looked
+like a deserted stable. It was long and narrow, the floor was thickly
+strewn with sand as in a riding school, and it was lighted only by
+small windows placed at some height from the ground. The dervishes had
+finished their morning performances, and were evidently resting from
+their exhausting labors. They looked completely prostrated, some lying
+about in corners, others sitting on their heels staring vacantly into
+space, engaged, as we were informed, in meditation on their invisible
+deity. They appeared to have lost all power of sight and hearing, for
+none of them responded to our questions until a great gaunt figure,
+wearing a tall cap that made him look at least seven feet high, emerged
+from an obscure corner. Informing us that he was their chief, the giant
+gave us to understand that the saintly brethren, being in the habit of
+receiving orders for additional ceremonies from Allah himself, must
+on no account be disturbed. But when our interpreter had explained to
+him the object of our visit, which concerned himself alone, as he was
+the sole custodian of the “divining rod,” his objections vanished and
+he extended his hand for alms. Upon being gratified, he intimated that
+only two of our party could be admitted at one time into the confidence
+of the future, and led the way, followed by Miss H—— and myself.
+
+Plunging after him into what seemed to be a half subterranean passage,
+we were led to the foot of a tall ladder leading to a chamber under
+the roof. We scrambled up after our guide, and at the top we found
+ourselves in a wretched garret of moderate size, with bare walls and
+destitute of furniture. The floor was carpeted with a thick layer of
+dust, and cobwebs festooned the walls in neglected confusion. In the
+corner we saw something that I at first mistook for a bundle of old
+rags; but the heap presently moved and got on its legs, advanced to the
+middle of the room and stood before us, the most extraordinary looking
+creature that I ever beheld. Its sex was female, but whether she was a
+woman or child it was impossible to decide. She was a hideous-looking
+dwarf, with an enormous head, the shoulders of a grenadier, with
+a waist in proportion; the whole supported by two short, lean,
+spider-like legs that seemed unequal to the task of bearing the weight
+of the monstrous body. She had a grinning countenance like the face of
+a satyr, and it was ornamented with letters and signs from the Koran
+painted in bright yellow. On her forehead was a blood-red crescent;
+her head was crowned with a dusty tarbouche, or fez; her legs were
+arrayed in large Turkish trousers, and some dirty white muslin wrapped
+round her body barely sufficed to conceal its hideous deformities. This
+creature rather let herself drop than sat down in the middle of the
+floor, and as her weight descended on the rickety boards it sent up a
+cloud of dust that set us coughing and sneezing. This was the famous
+Tatmos known as the Damascus oracle!
+
+Without losing time in idle talk, the dervish produced a piece of
+chalk, and traced around the girl a circle about six feet in diameter.
+Fetching from behind the door twelve small copper lamps which he filled
+with some dark liquid from a small bottle which he drew from his bosom,
+he placed them symmetrically around the magic circle. He then broke a
+chip of wood from a panel of the half ruined door, which bore the marks
+of many a similar depredation, and, holding the chip between his thumb
+and finger he began blowing on it at regular intervals, alternating
+the blowing with mutterings of some kind of weird incantation, till
+suddenly, and without any apparent cause for its ignition, there
+appeared a spark on the chip and it blazed up like a dry match. The
+dervish then lit the twelve lamps at this self-generated flame.
+
+During this process, Tatmos, who had sat till then altogether
+unconcerned and motionless, removed her yellow slippers from her naked
+feet, and throwing them into a corner, disclosed as an additional
+beauty, a sixth toe on each deformed foot. The dervish now reached over
+into the circle and seizing the dwarf’s ankles gave her a jerk, as if
+he had been lifting a bag of corn, and raised her clear off the ground,
+then, stepping back a pace, held her head downward. He shook her as
+one might a sack to pack its contents, the motion being regular and
+easy. He then swung her to and fro like a pendulum until the necessary
+momentum was acquired, when letting go one foot, and seizing the other
+with both hands, he made a powerful muscular effort and whirled her
+round in the air as if she had been an Indian club.
+
+My companion had shrunk back in alarm to the farthest corner. Round
+and round the dervish swung his living burden, she remaining perfectly
+passive. The motion increased in rapidity until the eye could hardly
+follow the body in its circuit. This continued for perhaps two or three
+minutes, until, gradually slackening the motion, he at length stopped
+it altogether, and in an instant had landed the girl on her knees
+in the middle of the lamp-lit circle. Such was the Eastern mode of
+mesmerization as practised among the dervishes.
+
+And now the dwarf seemed entirely oblivious of external objects and in
+a deep trance. Her head and jaw dropped on her chest, her eyes were
+glazed and staring, and altogether her appearance was even more hideous
+than before. The dervish then carefully closed the shutters of the only
+window, and we should have been in total obscurity, but that there was
+a hole bored in it, through which entered a bright ray of sunlight that
+shot through the darkened room and shone upon the girl. He arranged her
+drooping head so that the ray should fall upon the crown, after which
+motioning us to remain silent, he folded his arms upon his bosom, and,
+fixing his gaze upon the bright spot, became as motionless as a stone
+image. I, too, riveted my eyes on the same spot, wondering what was to
+happen next, and how all this strange ceremony was to help me to find
+Ralph.
+
+By degrees, the bright patch, as if it had drawn through the sunbeam
+a greater splendor from without and condensed it within its own
+area, shaped itself into a brilliant star, sending out rays in every
+direction as from a focus.
+
+A curious optical effect then occurred: the room, which had been
+previously partially lighted by the sunbeam, grew darker and darker as
+the star increased in radiance, until we found ourselves in an Egyptian
+gloom. The star twinkled, trembled and turned, at first with a slow
+gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its circumference
+at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disk, and we no longer
+saw the dwarf, who seemed absorbed into its light. Having gradually
+attained an extremely rapid velocity, as the girl had done when whirled
+by the dervish, the motion began to decrease and finally merged into
+a feeble vibration, like the shimmer of moonbeams on rippling water.
+Then it flickered for a moment longer, emitted a few last flashes, and
+assuming the density and iridescence of an immense opal, it remained
+motionless. The disk now radiated a moon-like luster, soft and silvery,
+but instead of illuminating the garret, it seemed only to intensify
+the darkness. The edge of the circle was not penumbrous, but on the
+contrary sharply defined like that of a silver shield.
+
+All being now ready, the dervish without uttering a word, or removing
+his gaze from the disk, stretched out a hand, and taking hold of mine,
+he drew me to his side and pointed to the luminous shield. Looking at
+the place indicated, we saw large patches appear like those on the
+moon. These gradually formed themselves into figures that began moving
+about in high relief in their natural colors. They neither appeared
+like a photograph nor an engraving; still less like the reflection of
+images on a mirror, but as if the disk were a cameo, and they were
+raised above its surface and then endowed with life and motion. To my
+astonishment and my friend’s consternation, we recognized the bridge
+leading from Galata to Stamboul spanning the Golden Horn from the new
+to the old city. There were the people hurrying to and fro, steamers
+and gay caiques gliding on the blue Bosphorus, the many colored
+buildings, villas and palaces reflected in the water; and the whole
+picture illuminated by the noon-day sun. It passed like a panorama,
+but so vivid was the impression that we could not tell whether it or
+ourselves were in motion. All was bustle and life, but not a sound
+broke the oppressive stillness. It was noiseless as a dream. It was
+a phantom picture. Street after street and quarter after quarter
+succeeded one another; there was the bazaar, with its narrow, roofed
+passages, the small shops on either side, the coffee houses with
+gravely smoking Turks; and as either they glided past us or we past
+them, one of the smokers upset the narghilé and coffee of another,
+and a volley of soundless invectives caused us great amusement. So
+we traveled with the picture until we came to a large building that I
+recognized as the palace of the Minister of Finance. In a ditch behind
+the house, and close to a mosque, lying in a pool of mud with his
+silken coat all bedraggled, lay my poor Ralph! Panting and crouching
+down as if exhausted, he seemed to be in a dying condition; and near
+him were gathered some sorry-looking curs who lay blinking in the sun
+and snapping at the flies!
+
+I had seen all that I desired, although I had not breathed a word about
+the dog to the dervish, and had come more out of curiosity than with
+the idea of any success. I was impatient to leave at once and recover
+Ralph, but as my companion besought me to remain a little while longer,
+I reluctantly consented. The scene faded away and Miss H—— placed
+herself in turn by the side of the dervish.
+
+“I will think of _him_,” she whispered in my ear with the eager tone
+that young ladies generally assume when talking of the worshipped _him_.
+
+There is a long stretch of sand and a blue sea with white waves dancing
+in the sun, and a great steamer is ploughing her way along past a
+desolate shore, leaving a milky track behind her. The deck is full
+of life, the men are busy forward, the cook with white cap and apron
+is coming out of the galley, uniformed officers are moving about,
+passengers fill the quarter-deck, lounging, flirting or reading, and a
+young man we both recognize comes forward and leans over the taffrail.
+It is—_him_.
+
+Miss H—— gives a little gasp, blushes and smiles, and concentrates her
+thoughts again. The picture of the steamer vanishes; the magic moon
+remains for a few moments blank. But new spots appear on its luminous
+face, we see a library slowly emerging from its depths—a library with
+green carpet and hangings, and book-shelves round the sides of the
+room. Seated in an arm-chair at a table under a hanging lamp, is an old
+gentleman writing. His gray hair is brushed back from his forehead,
+his face is smooth-shaven and his countenance has an expression of
+benignity.
+
+The dervish made an hasty motion to enjoin silence; the light on the
+disk quivers, but resumes its steady brilliancy, and again its surface
+is imageless for a second.
+
+We are back in Constantinople now and out of the pearly depths of the
+shield forms our own apartment in the hotel. There are our papers and
+books on the bureau, my friend’s traveling hat in a corner, her ribbons
+hanging on the glass, and lying on the bed the very dress she had
+changed when starting out on our expedition. No detail was lacking to
+make the identification complete; and as if to prove that we were not
+seeing something conjured up in our own imagination, there lay upon
+the dressing-table two unopened letters, the handwriting on which was
+clearly recognized by my friend. They were from a very dear relative
+of hers, from whom she had expected to hear when in Athens, but had
+been disappointed. The scene faded away and we now saw her brother’s
+room with himself lying upon the lounge, and a servant bathing his
+head, whence, to our horror, blood was trickling. We had left the boy
+in perfect health but an hour before; and upon seeing this picture my
+companion uttered a cry of alarm, and seizing me by the hand dragged
+me to the door. We rejoined our guide and friends in the long hall and
+hurried back to the hotel.
+
+Young H—— had fallen downstairs and cut his forehead rather badly;
+in our room, on the dressing-table were the two letters which had
+arrived in our absence. They had been forwarded from Athens. Ordering
+a carriage, I at once drove to the Ministry of Finance, and alighting
+with the guide, hurriedly made for the ditch I had seen for the first
+time in the shining disk! In the middle of the pool, badly mangled,
+half-famished, but still alive, lay my beautiful spaniel Ralph, and
+near him were the blinking curs, unconcernedly snapping at the flies.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE POLAR LANDS
+
+(A Christmas Story)
+
+
+Just a year ago, during the Christmas holidays, a numerous society had
+gathered in the country house, or rather the old hereditary castle,
+of a wealthy landowner in Finland. Many were the remains in it of our
+forefathers’ hospitable way of living; and many the medieval customs
+preserved, founded on traditions and superstitions, semi-Finnish and
+semi-Russian, the latter imported into it by its female proprietors
+from the shores of the Neva. Christmas trees were being prepared and
+implements for divination were being made ready. For, in that old
+castle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous ancestors and
+knights and ladies, old deserted turrets, with bastions and Gothic
+windows; mysterious somber alleys, and dark and endless cellars, easily
+transformed into subterranean passages and caves, ghostly prison cells,
+haunted by the restless phantoms of the heroes of local legends. In
+short, the old Manor offered every commodity for romantic horrors. But
+alas! this once they serve for nought; in the present narrative these
+dear old horrors play no such part as they otherwise might.
+
+Its chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man—let us call him
+Erkler. Yes; Dr. Erkler, professor of medicine, half-German through
+his father, a full-blown Russian on his mother’s side and by education;
+and one who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.
+Nevertheless, very extraordinary things happened with him.
+
+Erkler, as it turned out was a great traveler, who by his own choice
+had accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his journeys round
+the world. More than once they had both seen death face to face from
+sunstrokes under the Tropics, from cold in the Polar Regions. All this
+notwithstanding, the doctor spoke with a never-abating enthusiasm
+about their “winterings” in Greenland and Novaya Zemla, and about the
+desert plains in Australia, where he lunched off a kangaroo and dined
+off an emu, and almost perished of thirst during the passage through a
+waterless track, which it took them forty hours to cross.
+
+“Yes,” he used to remark, “I have experienced almost everything, save
+what you would describe as _supernatural_.... This, of course if we
+throw out of account a certain extraordinary event in my life—a man
+I met, of whom I will tell you just now—and its ... indeed, rather
+strange, I may add quite _inexplicable_, results.”
+
+There was a loud demand that he should explain himself; and the doctor,
+forced to yield, began his narrative.
+
+“In 1878 we were compelled to winter on the north-western coast of
+Spitsbergen. We had been attempting to find our way during the short
+summer to the pole; but, as usual, the attempt had proved a failure,
+owing to the icebergs, and, after several such fruitless endeavors,
+we had to give it up. No sooner had we settled than the polar night
+descended upon us, our steamers got wedged in and frozen between the
+blocks of ice in the Gulf of Mussel, and we found ourselves cut off
+for eight long months from the rest of the living world.... I confess
+I, for one, felt it terribly at first. We became especially discouraged
+when one stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of materials
+prepared for our winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deer
+from our herd. Starvation in prospect is no incentive to good humor;
+and with the deer we had lost the best _plat de résistance_ against
+polar frosts, human organisms demanding in that climate an increase
+of heating and solid food. However, we were finally reconciled to
+our loss, and even got accustomed to the local and in reality more
+nutritious food—seals, and seal-grease. Our men from the remnants of
+our lumber built a house neatly divided into two compartments, one for
+our three professors and myself, and the other for themselves; and, a
+few wooden sheds being constructed for meteorological, astronomical
+and magnetic purposes, we even added a protecting stable for the few
+remaining deer. And then began the monotonous series of dawnless nights
+and days, hardly distinguishable one from the other, except through
+dark-gray shadows. At times, the “blues” we got into were fearful! We
+had contemplated sending two of our three steamers home in September,
+but the premature and unforeseen formation of ice walls round them had
+thwarted our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands, we had
+to economize still more with our meager provisions, fuel and light.
+Lamps were used only for scientific purposes: the rest of the time
+we had to content ourselves with God’s light—the moon and the Aurora
+Borealis.... But how describe these glorious, incomparable northern
+lights! Rings, arrows, gigantic conflagrations of accurately divided
+rays of the most vivid and varied colors. The November moonlight
+nights were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow and the
+frozen rocks was most striking. These were fairy nights.
+
+“Well, one such night—it may have been one such _day_, for all I know,
+as from the end of November to about the middle of March we had no
+twilights at all, to distinguish the one from the other—we suddenly
+espied in the play of colored beams, which were then throwing a golden
+rosy hue on the snow plains, a dark moving spot.... It grew, and seemed
+to scatter as it approached nearer to us. What did this mean?... It
+looked like a herd of cattle, or a group of living men, trotting over
+the snowy wilderness.... But animals there were white like everything
+else. What then was this?... human beings?...
+
+“We could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men was approaching
+our dwelling. It turned out to be about fifty seal-hunters, guided by
+Matiliss, a well-known veteran mariner, from Norway. They had been
+caught by the icebergs, just as we had been.
+
+“‘How did you know that we were here?’ we asked.
+
+“‘Old Johan, this very same old party, showed us the way’—they
+answered, pointing to a venerable-looking old man with snow-white locks.
+
+“In sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide far better to have
+sat at home over his fire than to have been seal-hunting in polar lands
+with younger men. And we told them so, still wondering how he came to
+learn of our presence in this kingdom of white bears. At this Matiliss
+and his companions smiled, assuring us that ‘old Johan’ _knew all_.
+They remarked that we must be novices in polar borderlands, since we
+were ignorant of Johan’s personality and could still wonder at anything
+said of him.
+
+“‘It is nigh forty-five years,’ said the chief hunter, ‘that I have
+been catching seals in the Polar Seas, and as far as my personal
+remembrance goes, I have always known him, and just as he is now, an
+old, white-bearded man. And so far back as in the days when I used to
+go to sea, as a small boy with my father, my dad used to tell me the
+same of old Johan, and he added that his own father and grandfather
+too, had known Johan in their days of boyhood, none of them having ever
+seen him otherwise than white as our snows. And, as our forefathers
+nicknamed him “the white-haired all-knower,” thus do we, the seal
+hunters, call him, to this day.’
+
+“‘Would you make us believe he is two hundred years old?’—we laughed.
+
+“Some of our sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon, plied
+him with questions.
+
+“‘Grandfather! answer us, how old are you?’
+
+“‘I really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as long as God has
+decreed me to. As to my years, I never counted them.’
+
+“‘And how did you know, grandfather, that we were wintering in this
+place?’
+
+“‘God guided me. How I learned it I do not know; save that I knew—I
+knew it.’”
+
+
+
+
+THE ENSOULED VIOLIN
+
+
+I
+
+In the year 1828, an old German, a music teacher, came to Paris with
+his pupil and settled unostentatiously in one of the quiet faubourgs
+of the metropolis. The first rejoiced in the name of Samuel Klaus; the
+second answered to the more poetical appellation of Franz Stenio. The
+younger man was a violinist, gifted, as rumor went, with extraordinary,
+almost miraculous talent. Yet as he was poor and had not hitherto
+made a name for himself in Europe, he remained for several years in
+the capital of France—the heart and pulse of capricious continental
+fashion—unknown and unappreciated. Franz was a Styrian by birth, and,
+at the time of the event to be presently described, he was a young
+man considerably under thirty. A philosopher and a dreamer by nature,
+imbued with all the mystic oddities of true genius, he reminded one of
+some of the heroes in Hoffmann’s _Contes Fantastiques_. His earlier
+existence had been a very unusual, in fact, quite an eccentric one, and
+its history must be briefly told—for the better understanding of the
+present story.
+
+Born of very pious country people, in a quiet burg among the Styrian
+Alps; nursed “by the native gnomes who watched over his cradle”;
+growing up in the weird atmosphere of the ghouls and vampires who play
+such a prominent part in the household of every Styrian and Slavonian
+in Southern Austria; educated later, as a student, in the shadow of
+the old Rhenish castles of Germany; Franz from his childhood had
+passed through every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called
+“supernatural.” He had also studied at one time the “occult arts” with
+an enthusiastic disciple of Paracelsus and Kunrath; alchemy had few
+theoretical secrets for him; and he had dabbled in “ceremonial magic”
+and “sorcery” with some Hungarian Tziganes. Yet he loved above all else
+music, and above music—his violin.
+
+At the age of twenty-two he suddenly gave up his practical studies in
+the occult, and from that day, though as devoted as ever in thought
+to the beautiful Grecian Gods, he surrendered himself entirely to his
+art. Of his classic studies he had retained only that which related
+to the muses—Euterpe especially, at whose altar he worshipped—and
+Orpheus whose magic lyre he tried to emulate with his violin. Except
+his dreamy belief in the nymphs and the sirens, on account probably of
+the double relationship of the latter to the muses through Calliope and
+Orpheus, he was interested but little in the matters of this sublunary
+world. All his aspirations mounted, like incense, with the wave of the
+heavenly harmony that he drew from his instrument, to a higher and a
+nobler sphere. He dreamed awake, and lived a real though an enchanted
+life only during those hours when his magic bow carried him along the
+wave of sound to the Pagan Olympus, to the feet of Euterpe. A strange
+child he had ever been in his own home, where tales of magic and
+witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil; a still stranger boy he
+had become, until finally he had blossomed into manhood, without one
+single characteristic of youth. Never had a fair face attracted his
+attention; not for one moment had his thoughts turned from his solitary
+studies to a life beyond that of a mystic Bohemian. Content with his
+own company, he had thus passed the best years of his youth and manhood
+with his violin for his chief idol, and with the Gods and Goddesses of
+old Greece for his audience, in perfect ignorance of practical life.
+His whole existence had been one long day of dreams, of melody and
+sunlight, and he had never felt any other aspirations.
+
+How useless, but oh, how glorious those dreams! how vivid! and why
+should he desire any better fate? Was he not all that he wanted to
+be, transformed in a second of thought into one or another hero; from
+Orpheus, who held all nature breathless, to the urchin who piped away
+under the plane tree to the naiads of Callirrhoe’s crystal fountain?
+Did not the swift-footed nymphs frolic at his beck and call to the
+sound of the magic flute of the Arcadian Shepherd—who was himself?
+Behold, the Goddess of Love and Beauty herself descending from on high,
+attracted by the sweet-voiced notes of his violin!... Yet there came
+a time when he preferred Syrinx to Aphrodite—not as the fair nymph
+pursued by Pan, but after her transformation by the merciful Gods into
+the reed out of which the frustrated God of the Shepherds had made
+his magic pipe. For also, with time, ambition grows and is rarely
+satisfied. When he tried to emulate on his violin the enchanting sounds
+that resounded in his mind, the whole of Parnassus kept silent under
+the spell, or joined in heavenly chorus; but the audience he finally
+craved was composed of more than the Gods sung by Hesiod, verily of the
+most appreciative _mélomanes_ of European capitals. He felt jealous of
+the magic pipe, and would fain have had it at his command.
+
+“Oh, that I could allure a nymph into my beloved violin!”—he often
+cried, after awakening from one of his day-dreams. “Oh, that I could
+only span in spirit flight the abyss of Time! Oh, that I could find
+myself for one short day a partaker of the secret arts of the Gods,
+a God myself, in the sight and hearing of enraptured humanity; and,
+having learned the mystery of the lyre of Orpheus, or secured within my
+violin a siren, thereby benefit mortals to my own glory!”
+
+Thus, having for long years dreamed in the company of the Gods of his
+fancy, he now took to dreaming of the transitory glories of fame upon
+this earth. But at this time he was suddenly called home by his widowed
+mother from one of the German universities where he had lived for the
+last year or two. This was an event which brought his plans to an end,
+at least so far as the immediate future was concerned, for he had
+hitherto drawn upon her alone for his meager pittance, and his means
+were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place.
+
+His return had a very unexpected result. His mother, whose only love
+he was on earth, died soon after she had welcomed her Benjamin back;
+and the good wives of the burg exercised their swift tongues for many a
+month after as to the real causes of that death.
+
+Frau Stenio, before Franz’s return, was a healthy, buxom, middle-aged
+body, strong and hearty. She was a pious and a God-fearing soul
+too, who had never failed in saying her prayers, nor had missed an
+early mass for years during his absence. On the first Sunday after
+her son had settled at home—a day that she had been longing for and
+had anticipated for months in joyous visions, in which she saw him
+kneeling by her side in the little church on the hill—she called him
+from the foot of the stairs. The hour had come when her pious dream was
+to be realized, and she was waiting for him, carefully wiping the dust
+from the prayer-book he had used in his boyhood. But instead of Franz,
+it was his violin that responded to her call, mixing its sonorous voice
+with the rather cracked tones of the peal of the merry Sunday bells.
+The fond mother was somewhat shocked at hearing the prayer-inspiring
+sounds drowned by the weird, fantastic notes of the “Dance of the
+Witches”; they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking. But she almost
+fainted upon hearing the definite refusal of her well-beloved son to
+go to church. He never went to church, he coolly remarked. It was loss
+of time; besides which, the loud peals of the old church organ jarred
+on his nerves. Nothing should induce him to submit to the torture of
+listening to that cracked organ. He was firm and nothing could move
+him. To her supplications and remonstrances he put an end by offering
+to play for her a “Hymn to the Sun” he had just composed.
+
+From that memorable Sunday morning, Frau Stenio lost her usual serenity
+of mind. She hastened to lay her sorrows and seek for consolation at
+the foot of the confessional; but that which she heard in response
+from the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated soul with
+dismay and almost with despair. A feeling of fear, a sense of profound
+terror, which soon became a chronic state with her, pursued her from
+that moment; her nights became disturbed and sleepless, her days passed
+in prayer and lamentations. In her maternal anxiety for the salvation
+of her beloved son’s soul, and for his _post mortem_ welfare, she made
+a series of rash vows. Finding that neither the Latin petition to the
+Mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser, nor yet the
+humble supplications in German, addressed by herself to every saint
+she had reason to believe was residing in Paradise, worked the desired
+effect, she took to pilgrimages to distant shrines. During one of these
+journeys to a holy chapel situated high up in the mountains, she caught
+cold, amidst the glaciers of the Tyrol, and redescended only to take
+to a sick bed, from which she arose no more. Frau Stenio’s vow had led
+her, in one sense, to the desired result. The poor woman was now given
+an opportunity of seeking out in _propria persona_ the saints she had
+believed in so well, and of pleading face to face for the recreant son,
+who refused adherence to them and to the Church, scoffed at monk and
+confessional, and held the organ in such horror.
+
+Franz sincerely lamented his mother’s death. Unaware of being the
+indirect cause of it, he felt no remorse; but selling the modest
+household goods and chattels, light in purse and heart, he resolved to
+travel on foot for a year or two, before settling down to any definite
+profession.
+
+A hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe, and to try his luck
+in France, lurked at the bottom of this traveling project, but his
+Bohemian habits of life were too strong to be abruptly abandoned. He
+placed his small capital with a banker for a rainy day, and started
+on his pedestrian journey _via_ Germany and Austria. His violin paid
+for his board and lodging in the inns and farms on his way, and he
+passed his days in the green fields and in the solemn silent woods,
+face to face with Nature, dreaming all the time as usual with his eyes
+open. During the three months of his pleasant travels to and fro, he
+never descended for one moment from Parnassus; but, as an alchemist
+transmutes lead into gold, so he transformed everything on his way
+into a song of Hesiod or Anacreon. Every evening, while fiddling for
+his supper and bed, whether on a green lawn or in the hall of a rustic
+inn, his fancy changed the whole scene for him. Village swains and
+maidens became transfigured into Arcadian shepherds and nymphs. The
+sand-covered floor was now a green sward; the uncouth couples spinning
+round in a measured waltz with the wild grace of tamed bears became
+priests and priestesses of Terpsichore; the bulky, cherry-cheeked and
+blue-eyed daughters of rural Germany were the Hesperides circling
+around the trees laden with the golden apples. Nor did the melodious
+strains of the Arcadian demi-gods piping on their syrinxes, and audible
+but to his own enchanted ear, vanish with the dawn. For no sooner was
+the curtain of sleep raised from his eyes than he would sally forth
+into a new magic realm of day-dreams. On his way to some dark and
+solemn pine-forest, he played incessantly, to himself and to everything
+else. He fiddled to the green hill, and forthwith the mountain and the
+moss-covered rocks moved forward to hear him the better, as they had
+done at the sound of the Orphean lyre. He fiddled to the merry-voiced
+brook, to the hurrying river, and both slackened their speed and
+stopped their waves, and, becoming silent, seemed to listen to him in
+an entranced rapture. Even the long-legged stork who stood meditatively
+on one leg on the thatched top of the rustic mill, gravely resolving
+unto himself the problem of his too-long existence, sent out after
+him a long and strident cry, screeching, “Art thou Orpheus himself, O
+Stenio?”
+
+It was a period of full bliss, of a daily and almost hourly exaltation.
+The last words of his dying mother, whispering to him of the horrors
+of eternal condemnation, had left him unaffected, and the only vision
+her warning evoked in him was that of Pluto. By a ready association of
+ideas, he saw the lord of the dark nether kingdom greeting him as he
+had greeted the husband of Eurydice before him. Charmed with the magic
+sounds of his violin, the wheel of Ixion was at a standstill once more,
+thus affording relief to the wretched seducer of Juno, and giving the
+lie to those who claim eternity for the duration of the punishment of
+condemned sinners. He perceived Tantalus forgetting his never-ceasing
+thirst, and smacking his lips as he drank in the heaven-born melody;
+the stone of Sisyphus becoming motionless, the Furies themselves
+smiling on him, and the sovereign of the gloomy regions delighted, and
+awarding preference to his violin over the lyre of Orpheus. Taken _au
+sérieux_, mythology thus seems a decided antidote to fear, in the face
+of theological threats, especially when strengthened with an insane and
+passionate love of music; with Franz, Euterpe proved always victorious
+in every contest, aye, even with Hell itself!
+
+But there is an end to everything, and very soon Franz had to give up
+uninterrupted dreaming. He had reached the university town where dwelt
+his old violin teacher, Samuel Klaus. When this antiquated musician
+found that his beloved and favorite pupil, Franz, had been left poor
+in purse and still poorer in earthly affections, he felt his strong
+attachment to the boy awaken with tenfold force. He took Franz to his
+heart, and forthwith adopted him as his son.
+
+The old teacher reminded people of one of those grotesque figures which
+look as if they had just stepped out of some medieval panel. And yet
+Klaus, with his fantastic _allures_ of a night-goblin, had the most
+loving heart, as tender as that of a woman, and the self-sacrificing
+nature of an old Christian martyr. When Franz had briefly narrated to
+him the history of his last few years, the professor took him by the
+hand, and leading him into his study simply said:
+
+“Stop with me, and put an end to your Bohemian life. Make yourself
+famous. I am old and childless and will be your father. Let us live
+together and forget all save fame.”
+
+And forthwith he offered to proceed with Franz to Paris, _via_ several
+large German cities, where they would stop to give concerts.
+
+In a few days Klaus succeeded in making Franz forget his vagrant life
+and its artistic independence, and reawakened in his pupil his now
+dormant ambition and desire for worldly fame. Hitherto, since his
+mother’s death, he had been content to received applause only from the
+Gods and Goddesses who inhabited his vivid fancy; now he began to crave
+once more for the admiration of mortals. Under the clever and careful
+training of old Klaus his remarkable talent gained in strength and
+powerful charm with every day, and his reputation grew and expanded
+with every city and town wherein he made himself heard. His ambition
+was being rapidly realized; the presiding genii of various musical
+centers to whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed him
+_the one_ violinist of the day, and the public declared loudly that he
+stood unrivaled by any one whom they had ever heard. These laudations
+very soon made both master and pupil completely lose their heads.
+
+But Paris was less ready with such appreciation. Paris makes
+reputations for itself, and will take none on faith. They had been
+living in it for almost three years, and were still climbing with
+difficulty the artist’s Calvary, when an event occurred which put
+an end even to their most modest expectations. The first arrival of
+Niccolo Paganini was suddenly heralded, and threw Lutetia into a
+convulsion of expectation. The unparalleled artist arrived, and—all
+Paris fell at once at his feet.
+
+
+II
+
+Now it is a well known fact that a superstition born in the dark days
+of medieval superstition, and surviving almost to the middle of the
+present century, attributed all such abnormal, out-of-the-way talent as
+that of Paganini to “supernatural” agency. Every great and marvelous
+artist had been accused in his day of dealings with the devil. A few
+instances will suffice to refresh the reader’s memory.
+
+Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the seventeenth century,
+was denounced as one who got his best inspirations from the Evil One,
+with whom he was, it was said, in regular league. This accusation
+was, of course, due to the almost magical impression he produced upon
+his audiences. His inspired performance on the violin secured for him
+in his native country the title of “Master of Nations.” The _Sonate
+du Diable_, also called “Tartini’s Dream”—as everyone who has heard
+it will be ready to testify—is the most weird melody ever heard or
+invented: hence, the marvelous composition has become the source of
+endless legends. Nor were they entirely baseless, since it was he,
+himself, who was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed to
+having written it on awakening from a dream, in which he had heard his
+sonata performed by Satan, for his benefit, and in consequence of a
+bargain made with his infernal majesty.
+
+Several famous singers, even, whose exceptional voices struck the
+hearers with superstitious admiration, have not escaped a like
+accusation. Pasta’s splendid voice was attributed in her day to the
+fact that, three months before her birth, the diva’s mother was carried
+during a trance to heaven, and there treated to a vocal concert of
+seraphs. Malibran was indebted for her voice to St. Cecelia, while
+others said she owed it to a demon who watched over her cradle and sung
+the baby to sleep. Finally, Paganini—the unrivaled performer, the mean
+Italian, who like Dryden’s Jubal striking on the “chorded shell” forced
+the throngs that followed him to worship the divine sounds produced,
+and made people say that “less than a God could not dwell within the
+hollow of his violin”—Paganini left a legend too.
+
+The almost supernatural art of the greatest violin player that the
+world has ever known was often speculated upon, never understood.
+The effect produced by him on his audience was literally marvelous,
+overpowering. The great Rossini is said to have wept like a sentimental
+German maiden on hearing him play for the first time. The Princess
+Elisa of Lucca, a sister of the great Napoleon, in whose service
+Paganini was, as director of her private orchestra, for a long time
+was unable to hear him play without fainting. In women he produced
+nervous fits and hysterics at his will; stout-hearted men he drove to
+frenzy. He changed cowards into heroes and made the bravest soldiers
+feel like so many nervous school-girls. Is it to be wondered at, then,
+that hundreds of weird tales circulated for long years about and
+around the mysterious Genoese, that modern Orpheus of Europe? One of
+these was especially ghastly. It was rumored, and was believed by more
+people than would probably like to confess it, that the strings of his
+violin were made of _human intestines, according to all the rules and
+requirements of the Black Art_.
+
+Exaggerated as this idea may seem to some, it has nothing impossible in
+it; and it is more than probable that it was this legend that led to
+the extraordinary events which we are about to narrate. Human organs
+are often used by the Eastern Black Magician, so-called, and it is an
+averred fact that some Bengâlî Tântrikas (reciters of _tantras_, or
+“invocations to the demon,” as a reverend writer has described them)
+use human corpses, and certain internal and external organs pertaining
+to them, as powerful magical agents for bad purposes.
+
+However this may be, now that the magnetic and mesmeric potencies
+of hypnotism are recognized as facts by most physicians, it may be
+suggested with less danger than heretofore that the extraordinary
+effects of Paganini’s violin-playing were not, perhaps, entirely due
+to his talent and genius. The wonder and awe he so easily excited were
+as much caused by his external appearance, “which had something weird
+and demoniacal in it,” according to certain of his biographers, as by
+the inexpressible charm of his execution and his remarkable mechanical
+skill. The latter is demonstrated by his perfect imitation of the
+flageolet, and his performance of long and magnificent melodies on the
+G string alone. In this performance, which many an artist has tried to
+copy without success, he remains unrivaled to this day.
+
+It is owing to this remarkable appearance of his—termed by his
+friends eccentric, and by his too nervous victims, diabolical—that
+he experienced great difficulties in refuting certain ugly rumors.
+These were credited far more easily in his day than they would be
+now. It was whispered throughout Italy, and even in his own native
+town, that Paganini had murdered his wife, and, later on, a mistress,
+both of whom he had loved passionately, and both of whom he had not
+hesitated to sacrifice to his fiendish ambition. He had made himself
+proficient in magic arts, it was asserted, and had succeeded thereby
+in imprisoning the souls of his two victims in his violin—his famous
+Cremona.
+
+It is maintained by the immediate friends of Ernst T. W. Hoffmann, the
+celebrated author of _Die Elixire des Teufels_, _Meister Martin_, and
+other charming and mystical tales, that Councillor Crespel, in the
+_Violin of Cremona_, was taken from the legend about Paganini. It is,
+as all who have read it know, the history of a celebrated violin, into
+which the voice and the soul of a famous diva, a woman whom Crespel had
+loved and killed, had passed, and to which was added the voice of his
+beloved daughter, Antonia.
+
+Nor was this superstition utterly ungrounded, nor was Hoffmann to
+be blamed for adopting it, after he had heard Paganini’s playing.
+The extraordinary facility with which the artist drew out of his
+instrument, not only the most unearthly sounds, but positively human
+voices, justified the suspicion. Such effects might well have startled
+an audience and thrown terror into many a nervous heart. Add to this
+the impenetrable mystery connected with a certain period of Paganini’s
+youth, and the most wild tales about him must be found in a measure
+justifiable, and even excusable; especially among a nation whose
+ancestors knew the Borgias and the Medicis of Black Art fame.
+
+
+III
+
+In those pre-telegraphic days, newspapers were limited, and the wings
+of fame had a heavier flight than they have now. Franz had hardly heard
+of Paganini; and when he did, he swore he would rival, if not eclipse,
+the Genoese magician. Yes, he would either become the most famous of
+all living violinists, or he would break his instrument and put an end
+to his life at the same time.
+
+Old Klaus rejoiced at such a determination. He rubbed his hands in
+glee, and jumping about on his lame leg like a crippled satyr, he
+flattered and incensed his pupil, believing himself all the while to be
+performing a sacred duty to the holy and majestic cause of art.
+
+Upon first setting foot in Paris, three years before, Franz had
+all but failed. Musical critics pronounced him a rising star, but
+had all agreed that he required a few more years’ practice, before
+he could hope to carry his audiences by storm. Therefore, after a
+desperate study of over two years and uninterrupted preparations, the
+Styrian artist had finally made himself ready for his first serious
+appearance in the great Opera House where a public concert before
+the most exacting critics of the old world was to be held; at this
+critical moment Paganini’s arrival in the European metropolis placed
+an obstacle in the way of the realization of his hopes, and the old
+German professor wisely postponed his pupil’s _début_. At first he had
+simply smiled at the wild enthusiasm, the laudatory hymns sung about
+the Genoese violinist, and the almost superstitious awe with which his
+name was pronounced. But very soon Paganini’s name became a burning
+iron in the hearts of both the artists, and a threatening phantom in
+the mind of Klaus. A few days more, and they shuddered at the very
+mention of their great rival, whose success became with every night
+more unprecedented.
+
+The first series of concerts was over, but neither Klaus nor Franz
+had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him and of judging for
+themselves. So great and so beyond their means was the charge for
+admission, and so small the hope of getting a free pass from a brother
+artist justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary transactions,
+that they had to wait for a chance, as did so many others. But the day
+came when neither master nor pupil could control their impatience any
+longer; so they pawned their watches, and with the proceeds bought two
+modest seats.
+
+Who can describe the enthusiasm, the triumphs, of this famous, and at
+the same time fatal night! The audience was frantic; men wept and women
+screamed and fainted; while both Klaus and Stenio sat looking paler
+than two ghosts. At the first touch of Paganini’s magic bow, both Franz
+and Samuel felt as if the icy hand of death had touched them. Carried
+away by an irresistible enthusiasm, which turned into a violent,
+unearthly mental torture, they dared neither look into each other’s
+faces, nor exchange one word during the whole performance.
+
+At midnight, while the chosen delegates of the Musical Societies
+and the Conservatory of Paris unhitched the horses, and dragged the
+carriage of the grand artist home in triumph, the two Germans returned
+to their modest lodging, and it was a pitiful sight to see them.
+Mournful and desperate, they placed themselves in their usual seats at
+the fire-corner, and neither for a while opened his mouth.
+
+“Samuel!” at last exclaimed Franz, pale as death itself. “Samuel—it
+remains for us now but to die!... Do you hear me?... We are worthless!
+We were two madmen to have ever hoped that any one in this world would
+ever rival ... him.”
+
+The name of Paganini stuck in his throat, as in utter despair he fell
+into his arm chair.
+
+The old professor’s wrinkles suddenly became purple. His little
+greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescently as, bending toward his pupil, he
+whispered to him in hoarse and broken tones:
+
+“_Nein, Nein!_ Thou art wrong, my Franz! I have taught thee, and thou
+hast learned all of the great art that a simple mortal, and a Christian
+by baptism, can learn from another simple mortal. Am I to blame because
+these accursed Italians, in order to reign unequaled in the domain of
+art, have recourse to Satan and the diabolical effects of Black Magic?”
+
+Franz turned his eyes upon his old master. There was a sinister light
+burning in those glittering orbs; a light telling plainly that, to
+secure such a power, he, too, would not scruple to sell himself, body
+and soul, to the Evil One.
+
+But he said not a word, and, turning his eyes from his old master’s
+face, gazed dreamily at the dying embers.
+
+The same long-forgotten incoherent dreams, which, after seeming such
+realities to him in his younger days, had been given up entirely, and
+had gradually faded from his mind, now crowded back into it with the
+same force and vividness as of old. The grimacing shades of Ixion,
+Sisyphus and Tantalus resurrected and stood before him, saying:
+
+“What matters hell—in which thou believest not. And even if hell there
+be, it is the hell described by the old Greeks, not that of the modern
+bigots—a locality full of conscious shadows, to whom thou canst be a
+second Orpheus.”
+
+Franz felt that he was going mad, and, turning instinctively, he
+looked his old master once more right in the face. Then his bloodshot
+eye evaded the gaze of Klaus.
+
+Whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind of his pupil,
+or whether he wanted to draw him out, to make him speak, and thus to
+divert his thoughts, must remain as hypothetical to the reader as
+it is to the writer. Whatever may have been in his mind, the German
+enthusiast went on, speaking with a feigned calmness:
+
+“Franz, my dear boy, I tell you that the art of the accursed Italian
+is not natural; that it is due neither to study nor to genius. It
+never was acquired in the usual, natural way. You need not stare at
+me in that wild manner, for what I say is in the mouth of millions of
+people. Listen to what I now tell you, and try to understand. You have
+heard the strange tale whispered about the famous Tartini? He died one
+fine Sabbath night strangled by his familiar demon, who had taught
+him how to endow his violin with a human voice, by shutting up in it,
+by means of incantations, the soul of a young virgin. Paganini did
+more. In order to endow his instrument with the faculty of emitting
+human sounds, such as sobs, despairing cries, supplications, moans
+of love and fury—in short, the most heart-rending notes of the human
+voice—Paganini became the murderer not only of his wife and his
+mistress, but also of a friend, who was more tenderly attached to
+him than any other being on this earth. He then made the four chords
+of his magic violin out of the intestines of his last victim. This
+is the secret of his enchanting talent of that overpowering melody,
+that combination of sounds, which you will never be able to master
+unless....”
+
+The old man could not finish his sentence. He staggered back before the
+fiendish look of his pupil, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an expression which
+reminded Klaus of those of a hyena. His pallor was cadaverous. For some
+time he could not speak, but only gasp for breath. At last he slowly
+muttered:
+
+“Are you in earnest?”
+
+“I am, as I hope to help you.”
+
+“And.... And do you really believe that had I only the means of
+obtaining human intestines for strings, I could rival Paganini?” asked
+Franz, after a moment’s pause, and casting down his eyes.
+
+The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange look of
+determination upon it, softly answered:
+
+“Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our purpose; they must
+have belonged to some one who had loved us well, with an unselfish,
+holy love. Tartini endowed his violin with the life of a virgin; but
+that virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The fiendish artist
+had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he managed to catch her last
+breath as she expired, pronouncing his beloved name, and he then
+transferred this breath to his violin. As to Paganini, I have just told
+you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim, though, that he
+murdered him to get possession of his intestines.
+
+“Oh, for the power of the human voice!” Samuel went on, after a brief
+pause. “What can equal the eloquence, the magic spell of the human
+voice? Do you think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this
+great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one right into the
+clutches of him ... who must remain unnamed at night?” he added, with
+a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth.
+
+Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to behold, he left his
+place, took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging, and,
+with one powerful grasp of the chords, he tore them out and flung them
+into the fire.
+
+Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were hissing upon the
+coals, where, among the blazing logs, they wriggled and curled like so
+many living snakes.
+
+“By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of Circe!” he exclaimed,
+with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals; “by the Furies of
+Hell and Pluto himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O Samuel, my
+master, never to touch a violin again until I can string it with four
+human chords. May I be accursed for ever and ever if I do!” He fell
+senseless on the floor, with a deep sob, that ended like a funeral
+wail; old Samuel lifted him up as he would have lifted a child, and
+carried him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a physician.
+
+
+IV
+
+For several days after this painful scene Franz was very ill, ill
+almost beyond recovery. The physician declared him to be suffering
+from brain fever and said that the worst was to be feared. For nine
+long days the patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was nursing
+him night and day with the solicitude of the tenderest mother, was
+horrified at the work of his own hands. For the first time since their
+acquaintance began, the old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his
+pupil, was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird,
+superstitious, cold, and, at the same time, passionate nature; and—he
+trembled at what he discovered. For he saw that which he had failed
+to perceive before—Franz as he was in reality, and not as he seemed
+to superficial observers. Music was the life of the young man, and
+adulation was the air he breathed, without which that life became a
+burden; from the chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and
+being, but the applause of men and even of Gods was necessary to its
+support. He saw unveiled before his eyes a genuine, artistic, _earthly_
+soul, with its divine counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses,
+all fancy and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening to
+the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy Klaus felt as if
+he were for the first time in his long life exploring a marvelous
+and untraveled region, a human nature not of this world but of some
+incomplete planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than once he
+asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his “boy” to
+let him die before he returned to consciousness.
+
+But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an idea.
+Franz had bewitched his truly artistic nature, and now old Klaus felt
+as though their two lives were inseparably linked together. That he
+could thus feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to save
+Franz, even at the expense of his own old and, as he thought, useless
+life.
+
+The seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis. For
+twenty-four hours the patient never closed his eyes, nor remained for a
+moment silent; he raved continuously during the whole time. His visions
+were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic, ghastly
+figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small dark
+room, in regular and uninterrupted procession, and he greeted each by
+name as he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself as
+Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands made of human intestines.
+At the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black waters of the river Styx
+were running.... They had deserted Arcadia, and were now endeavoring
+to encircle within a seven-fold embrace the rock upon which he was
+suffering....
+
+“Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean rock, old man?” he roared
+into his adopted father’s ear.... “Listen then, ... its name is ...
+called ... Samuel Klaus....”
+
+“Yes, yes!...” the German murmured disconsolately. “It is I who killed
+him, while seeking to console. The news of Paganini’s magic arts struck
+his fancy too vividly.... Oh, my poor, poor boy!”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The patient broke into a loud and discordant laugh.
+“Aye, poor old man, sayest thou?... So, so, thou art of poor stuff,
+anyhow, and wouldst look well only when stretched upon a fine Cremona
+violin!...”
+
+Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over the poor maniac,
+and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress as tender and as gentle as that
+of a doting mother, he left the sick-room for a few instants, to seek
+relief in his own garret. When he returned, the ravings were following
+another channel. Franz was singing, trying to imitate the sounds of a
+violin.
+
+Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the sick man became
+perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of fire clutching at his violin.
+Their skeleton hands, from each finger of which grew a flaming claw,
+beckoned to old Samuel.... They approached and surrounded the old
+master, and were preparing to rip him open ... him “the only man on
+this earth who loves me with an unselfish, holy love, and ... whose
+intestines can be of any good at all!” he went on whispering, with
+glaring eyes and demon laugh....
+
+By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared, and by the end
+of the ninth day Stenio had left his bed, having no recollection of his
+illness, and no suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his inner
+thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible idea as
+the sacrifice of his old master to his ambition had ever entered his
+mind? Hardly. The only immediate result of his fatal illness was, that
+as, by reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no issue,
+another passion awoke, which might avail to feed his ambition and his
+insatiable fancy. He plunged headlong into the study of the Occult
+Arts, of Alchemy and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young
+dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his,
+as he thought, for ever lost violin....
+
+Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation about Paganini
+was never resumed between the master and the pupil. But a profound
+melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a
+word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual
+place. It was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them.
+
+The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic, even avoiding the
+mention of music. Once, as his old professor, after long hesitation,
+took out his own violin from its dust-covered case and prepared to
+play, Franz gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the first
+notes of the bow, however, he glared like a madman, and rushing out
+of the house, remained for hours, wandering in the streets. Then old
+Samuel in his turn threw his instrument down, and locked himself up in
+his room till the following morning.
+
+One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and gloomy, old
+Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat, and after hopping about the room
+in a magpie fashion, approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon
+the young man’s brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice:
+
+“Is it not time to put an end to all this?”...
+
+Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz echoed, as in a
+dream:
+
+“Yes, it is time to put an end to this.”
+
+Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.
+
+On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was astonished not
+to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him. But he had
+greatly altered during the last few months, and he at first paid no
+attention to his absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into
+the adjoining room, a little parlor where they had their meals, and
+which separated their two bedrooms. The fire had not been lighted since
+the embers had died out on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere
+visible of the professor’s busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties.
+Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz took his usual place
+at the corner of the now cold fire-place, and fell into an aimless
+reverie. As he stretched himself in his old arm-chair, raising both
+his hands to clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his,
+his hand came into contact with something on a shelf at his back; he
+knocked against a case, and brought it violently on the ground.
+
+It was old Klaus’ violin-case that came down to the floor with such
+a sudden crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it,
+rolling to the feet of Franz. And then the chords, striking against
+the brass fender emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the
+sigh of an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole room, and
+reverberated in the head and the very heart of the young man. The
+effect of that broken violin-string was magical.
+
+“Samuel!” cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from their sockets,
+and an unknown terror suddenly taking possession of his whole being.
+“Samuel! what has happened?... My good, my dear old master!” he called
+out, hastening to the professor’s little room, and throwing the door
+violently open. No one answered, all was silent within.
+
+He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own voice, so changed
+and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment. No reply came in response
+to his call. Naught followed but a dead silence ... that stillness
+which, in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the presence
+of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a tomb, such silence
+acquires a mysterious power, which strikes the sensitive soul with a
+nameless terror.... The little room was dark, and Franz hastened to
+open the shutters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless.... At the sight
+of the corpse of him who had loved him so well, and had been to him
+more than a father, Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling,
+a terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist got the
+better of the despair of the man, and smothered the feelings of the
+latter in a few seconds.
+
+A note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table near
+the corpse. With trembling hand, the violinist tore open the envelope,
+and read the following:
+
+  MY BELOVED SON, FRANZ,
+
+  When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice that
+  your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for
+  your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an inanimate lump
+  of clay. Of your old teacher there now remains but a clod of cold
+  organic matter. I need not prompt you as to what you have to do
+  with it. Fear not stupid prejudices. It is for your future fame
+  that I have made an offering of my body, and you would be guilty
+  of the blackest ingratitude were you now to render useless this
+  sacrifice. When you shall have replaced the chords upon your
+  violin, and these chords a portion of my own self, under your
+  touch it will acquire the power of that accursed sorcerer, all the
+  magic voices of Paganini’s instrument. You will find therein my
+  voice, my sighs and groans, my song of welcome, the prayerful sobs
+  of my infinite and sorrowful sympathy, my love for you. And now,
+  my Franz, fear nobody! Take your instrument with you, and dog the
+  steps of him who filled our lives with bitterness and despair!...
+  Appear in every arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a
+  rival, and bravely throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face.
+  O Franz! then only wilt thou hear with what a magic power the
+  full notes of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin.
+  Perchance, with a last caressing touch of its chords, thou wilt
+  remember that they once formed a portion of thine old teacher, who
+  now embraces and blesses thee for the last time.
+
+        SAMUEL
+
+Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but they dried up
+instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate hope and pride, the two
+orbs of the future magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the
+dead man, shone like the eyes of a demon.
+
+Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on that day, after
+the legal inquiry was over. As another note, written with the view
+of satisfying the authorities, had been prudently provided by the
+loving care of the old teacher, the verdict was, “Suicide from causes
+unknown;” after this the coroner and the police retired, leaving the
+bereaved heir alone in the death-room, with the remains of that which
+had once been a living man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the violin had been
+dusted, and four new, stout strings had been stretched upon it. Franz
+dared not look at them. He tried to play, but the bow trembled in his
+hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice-brigand. He then determined
+not to try again, until the portentous night should arrive, when he
+should have a chance of rivaling, nay, of surpassing, Paganini.
+
+The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and was giving a series
+of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium.
+
+
+V
+
+One night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting
+in the dining-room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting
+card, with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a
+young man with wild and staring eyes.
+
+Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons could bear, but
+receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini
+slightly bowed, and then dryly said:
+
+“Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your service.”
+
+On the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance
+of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing the strange
+notice:
+
+  On the night of ... at the Grand Theater of ... and for the
+  first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a German
+  violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the
+  world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel—upon their
+  violins. He purposes to compete with the great “virtuoso” in the
+  execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous
+  Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in
+  competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated “Fantaisie
+  Caprice” of the latter, known as “The Witches.”
+
+The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, amid his greatest
+triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled the
+usual price of admission, but still the theater could not hold the
+crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and the “duel” was in
+everyone’s mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed
+the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and
+down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen
+on his bed from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a
+death-like and dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke,
+but finding it too early to rise he fell to sleep again. And then he
+had a vivid dream—so vivid indeed, so life-like, that from its terrible
+realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.
+
+He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its case,
+the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those
+terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In
+accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first
+trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings,
+for he had since always practised on another instrument. But now in
+his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in
+it was attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of
+detaching his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case
+slowly rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two
+small, phosphorescent green eyes—eyes but too familiar to him—fixing
+themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill
+voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs—the voice and orbs of
+Samuel Klaus himself—resounded in Stenio’s horrified ear, and he heard
+it say:
+
+“Franz, my beloved boy.... Franz, I cannot, no, _I cannot_ separate
+myself from ... _them_!”
+
+And “they” twanged piteously inside the case.
+
+Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually
+freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head....
+
+“It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to formulate in his
+mind.
+
+“I have tried my best, Franzchen.... I have tried my best to sever
+myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces
+...” pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me to do
+so?...”
+
+Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the
+case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior
+power, like some living wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper
+and more jerky with every new pull.
+
+It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those sounds. He had
+often remarked them before—indeed, ever since he had used his master’s
+viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every occasion a
+feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their
+cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a
+hallucination.
+
+But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact, whether in dream
+or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the hallucination—if
+hallucination it were—was far more real and vivid than any reality.
+He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens in
+nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a finger.... He felt
+hopelessly paralyzed.
+
+The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment, and
+at last something inside the case snapped violently. The vision of his
+Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes,
+throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable terror.
+
+He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held
+him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the invisible
+Presence repeated:
+
+“Do, oh, do ... help me to cut myself off——”
+
+Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger
+defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.
+
+“Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!” he cried, in hoarse
+and trembling tones.
+
+He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while firmly pressing
+his left hand on it, he seized with the right a piece of rosin from
+the table and he drew on the leathered-covered top the sign of the
+six-pointed star—the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the
+rebellious djins inside their prisons.
+
+A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her dead little ones,
+came out of the violin-case:
+
+“Thou art ungrateful ... very ungrateful, my Franz!” sobbed the
+blubbering “spirit-voice.” “But I forgive ... for I still love thee
+well. Yet thou canst not shut me in ... boy. Behold!”
+
+[Illustration: “HE VIOLENTLY SHUT DOWN THE SELF-RAISING LID AND DREW ON
+THE LEATHER-COVERED TOP THE SIGN OF THE SIX-POINTED STAR, THE SEAL OF
+KING SOLOMON.”]
+
+And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered case and table,
+and rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape. Then it
+began growing, and as it grew, Franz felt himself gradually enfolded in
+cold and damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave a terrible
+cry and—awoke; but, strangely enough, not on his bed, but near the
+table, just as he had dreamed, pressing the violin-case desperately
+with both his hands.
+
+“It was but a dream, ... after all,” he muttered, still terrified, but
+relieved of the load on his heaving breast.
+
+With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and unlocked the case to
+inspect the violin. He found it covered with dust, but otherwise sound
+and in order, and he suddenly felt himself as cool and determined as
+ever. Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the bow,
+tightened the strings and tuned them. He even went so far as to try
+upon it the first notes of the “Witches”; first cautiously and timidly,
+then using his bow boldly and with full force.
+
+The sound of that loud, solitary note—defiant as the war trumpet of a
+conqueror, sweet and majestic as the touch of a seraph on his golden
+harp in the fancy of the faithful—thrilled through the very soul of
+Franz. It revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected potency in his bow,
+which ran on in strains that filled the room with the richest swell
+of melody, unheard by the artist until that night. Commencing in
+uninterrupted _legato_ tones, his bow sang to him of sun-bright hope
+and beauty, of moonlit nights, when the soft and balmy stillness
+endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and inanimate with
+a voice and a song of love. For a few brief moments it was a torrent of
+melody, the harmony of which, “tuned to soft woe,” was calculated to
+make mountains weep, had there been any in the room, and to soothe
+
+    ... even th’ inexorable powers of hell,
+
+the presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest hotel room.
+Suddenly, the solemn _legato_ chant, contrary to all laws of harmony,
+quivered, became _arpeggios_, and ended in shrill _staccatos_, like the
+notes of a hyena laugh. The same creeping sensation of terror, as he
+had before felt, came over him, and Franz threw the bow away. He had
+recognized the familiar laugh, and would have no more of it. Dressing,
+he locked the bedeviled violin securely in its case, and, taking it
+with him to the dining-room, determined to await quietly the hour of
+trial.
+
+
+VI
+
+The terrible hour of the struggle had come, and Stenio was at his
+post—calm, resolute, almost smiling.
+
+The theater was crowded to suffocation, and there was not even standing
+room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favoritism. The singular
+challenge had reached every quarter to which the post could carry it,
+and gold flowed freely into Paganini’s unfathomable pockets, to an
+extent almost satisfying even to his insatiate and venal soul.
+
+It was arranged that Paganini should begin. When he appeared upon
+the stage, the thick walls of the theater shook to their foundations
+with the applause that greeted him. He began and ended his famous
+composition “The Witches” amid a storm of cheers. The shouts of public
+enthusiasm lasted so long that Franz began to think his turn would
+never come. When, at last, Paganini, amid the roaring applause of a
+frantic public, was allowed to retire behind the scenes, his eye fell
+upon Stenio, who was tuning his violin, and he felt amazed at the
+serene calmness, the air of assurance, of the unknown German artist.
+
+When Franz approached the footlights, he was received with icy
+coldness. But for all that, he did not feel in the least disconcerted.
+He looked very pale, but his thin white lips wore a scornful smile as
+response to this dumb unwelcome. He was sure of his triumph.
+
+At the first notes of the prelude of “The Witches” a thrill of
+astonishment passed over the audience. It was Paganini’s touch, and—it
+was something more. Some—and they were the majority—thought that never,
+in his best moments of inspiration, had the Italian artist himself,
+in executing that diabolical composition of his, exhibited such an
+extraordinary diabolical power. Under the pressure of the long muscular
+fingers of Franz, the chords shivered like the palpitating intestines
+of a disemboweled victim under the vivisector’s knife. They moaned
+melodiously, like a dying child. The large blue eye of the artist,
+fixed with a satanic expression upon the sounding-board, seemed to
+summon forth Orpheus himself from the infernal regions, rather than the
+musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of the violin.
+Sounds seemed to transform themselves into objective shapes, thickly
+and precipitately gathering as at the evocation of a mighty magician,
+and to be whirling around him, like a host of fantastic, infernal
+figures, dancing the witches’ “goat dance.” In the empty depths of
+the shadowy background of the stage, behind the artist, a nameless
+phantasmogoria, produced by the concussion of unearthly vibrations,
+seemed to form pictures of shameless orgies, of the voluptuous hymens
+of a real witches’ Sabbat.... A collective hallucination took hold
+of the public. Panting for breath, ghastly, and trickling with the
+icy perspiration of an inexpressible horror, they sat spell-bound,
+and unable to break the spell of the music by the slightest motion.
+They experienced all the illicit enervating delights of the paradise
+of Mahommed, that come into the disordered fancy of an opium-eating
+Mussulman, and felt at the same time the abject terror, the agony of
+one who struggles against an attack of _delirium tremens_.... Many
+ladies shrieked aloud, others fainted, and strong men gnashed their
+teeth in a state of utter helplessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then came the _finale_. Thundering uninterrupted applause delayed its
+beginning, expanding the momentary pause to a duration of almost a
+quarter of an hour. The bravos were furious, almost hysterical. At
+last, when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile was as
+sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to attack the famous
+_finale_, his eye fell upon Paganini, who, calmly seated in the
+manager’s box, had been behind none in zealous applause. The small
+and piercing black eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the
+Stradivarius in the hands of Franz, but otherwise he seemed quite cool
+and unconcerned. His rival’s face troubled him for one short instant,
+but he regained his self-possession and, lifting once more his bow,
+drew the first note.
+
+Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and soon knew no bounds.
+The listeners heard and saw indeed. The witches’ voices resounded in
+the air, and beyond all the other voices, one voice was heard—
+
+    Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;
+    It seem’d of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
+    The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
+    The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion’s roar;
+    The sounds of billows beating on the shore;
+    The groan of winds among the leafy wood,
+    And burst of thunder from the rending cloud;—
+    ’Twas these, all these in one....
+
+The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering sounds—famous among
+prodigious musical feats—imitating the precipitate flight of the
+witches before bright dawn; of the unholy women saturated with the
+fumes of their nocturnal Saturnalia, when—a strange thing came to pass
+on the stage. Without the slightest transition, the notes suddenly
+changed. In their aerial flight of ascension and descent, their melody
+was unexpectedly altered in character. The sounds became confused,
+scattered, disconnected ... and then—it seemed from the sounding-board
+of the violin—came out squeaking, jarring tones, like those of a street
+Punch, screaming at the top of a senile voice:
+
+“Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy?... Have not I gloriously kept my
+promise, eh?”
+
+The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize the whole
+situation, those who heard the voice and the _Punchinello_-like tones,
+were freed, as by enchantment, from the terrible charm under which
+they had been held. Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of
+half-anger and half-irritation were now heard from every corner of the
+vast theater. The musicians in the orchestra, with faces still blanched
+from weird emotion, were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole
+audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet to solve the
+enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted, too disposed to laugh
+to remain one moment longer in the building.
+
+But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls and the pit
+became once more motionless, and stood petrified as though struck by
+lightning. What all saw was terrible enough—the handsome though wild
+face of the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect figure
+bent down, as though under the weight of years; but this was nothing
+to that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived. Franz
+Stenio’s person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist,
+cloud-like, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually tightening
+round the living form, as though ready to engulf him. And there were
+those also who discerned in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a
+clearly-defined figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of
+a grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old man, whose
+viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the
+violin.
+
+Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was then seen, driving
+his bow furiously across the human chords, with the contortions of a
+demoniac, as we see them represented on medieval cathedral paintings!
+
+An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and breaking now,
+for the last time, through the spell which had again bound them
+motionless, every living creature in the theater made one mad rush
+towards the door. It was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human
+torrent, roaring amid a shower of discordant notes, idiotic squeakings,
+prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous cries of frenzy, above which,
+like the detonations of pistol shots, was heard the consecutive
+bursting of the four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that
+bewitched violin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the theater was emptied of the last man of the audience, the
+terrified manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate
+performer. He was found dead and already stiff, behind the footlights,
+twisted up into the most unnatural of postures, with the “catguts”
+wound curiously around his neck, and his violin shattered into a
+thousand fragments....
+
+When it became publicly known that the unfortunate would-be rival of
+Niccolo Paganini had not left a cent to pay for his funeral or his
+hotel-bill, the Genoese, his proverbial meanness notwithstanding,
+settled the hotel-bill and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.
+
+He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of the Stradivarius—as
+a momento of the strange event.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_There is no Religion Higher than Truth_
+
+THE
+
+UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD
+
+AND
+
+THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
+
+_Established for the benefit of the people of the earth & all creatures_
+
+
+OBJECTS
+
+This BROTHERHOOD is part of a great and universal movement which has
+been active in all ages.
+
+This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact. Its principal
+purpose is to teach Brotherhood, demonstrate that it is a fact in
+nature and make it a living power in the life of humanity.
+
+Its subsidiary purpose is to study ancient and modern religions,
+science, philosophy and art; to investigate the laws of nature and the
+divine powers in man.
+
+                     *       *
+
+THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, founded by H. P.
+Blavatsky in New York, 1875, continued after her death under the
+leadership of the co-founder, William Q. Judge, and now under the
+leadership of their successor, Katherine Tingley, has its Headquarters
+at the International Theosophical Center, Point Loma, California.
+
+This Organization is not in any way connected with nor does it endorse
+any other societies using the name of Theosophy.
+
+                     *       *
+
+THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY welcomes to
+membership all who truly love their fellow men and desire the
+eradication of the evils caused by the barriers of race, creed, caste
+or color, which have so long impeded human progress; to all sincere
+lovers of truth and to all who aspire to higher and better things than
+the mere pleasures and interests of a worldly life, and are prepared to
+do all in their power to make Brotherhood a living power in the life of
+humanity, its various departments offer unlimited opportunities.
+
+The whole work of the Organization is under the direction of the Leader
+and Official Head, Katherine Tingley, as outlined in the Constitution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do Not Fail to Profit by the Following
+
+It is a regrettable fact that many people use the name of Theosophy and
+of our Organization for self-interest, as also that of H. P. Blavatsky,
+the Foundress, to attract attention to themselves and to gain public
+support. This they do in private and public speech and in publications,
+also by lecturing throughout the country. Without being in any way
+connected with THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, in
+many cases they permit it to be inferred that they are, thus misleading
+the public, and many honest inquirers are hence led away from the
+truths of Theosophy as presented by H. P. Blavatsky and her successors,
+William Q. Judge and Katherine Tingley, and practically exemplified in
+their Theosophical work for the uplifting of humanity.
+
+
+
+
+The International Brotherhood League
+
+(Founded in 1897 by Katherine Tingley)
+
+
+ITS OBJECTS ARE:
+
+1. To help men and women to realize the nobility of their calling and
+their true position in life.
+
+2. To educate children of all nations on the broadest lines of
+Universal Brotherhood; and to prepare destitute and homeless children
+to become workers for humanity.
+
+3. To ameliorate the condition of unfortunate women, and assist them to
+a higher life.
+
+4. To assist those who are, or have been in prisons, to establish
+themselves in honorable positions in life.
+
+5. To abolish capital punishment.
+
+6. To bring about a better understanding between so-called savage
+and civilized races, by promoting a closer and more sympathetic
+relationship between them.
+
+7. To relieve human suffering resulting from flood, famine, war, and
+other calamities; and, generally, to extend aid, help and comfort to
+suffering humanity throughout the world.
+
+
+For further information regarding the above Notices, address
+
+            KATHERINE TINGLEY
+  INTERNATIONAL THEOSOPHICAL HEADQUARTERS,
+                    POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA
+
+
+
+
+Books Recommended to Inquirers
+
+For _complete_ BOOK LIST write to THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING CO.,
+Point Loma, California
+
+
+  =Bhagavad Gita=; (W. Q. Judge, Am. Edition) pocket size,
+    Morocco, gilt edges                                  $1.00
+    Red leather                                            .75
+    _The pearl of the scriptures of the East._
+
+  =Echoes from the Orient=; (W. Q. Judge) cloth            .50
+    Paper                                                  .25
+    _21 valued articles, giving a broad outline of
+    the Theosophical doctrines, written for the
+    newspaper-reading public._
+
+  =Epitome of Theosophical Teachings, An=
+    (W. Q. Judge), 40 pages                                .15
+
+  =Yoga Aphorisms= (translated by W. Q. Judge), pocket
+    size, leather                                          .75
+
+  =Isis Unveiled=, by H. P. Blavatsky. 2 vols, royal 8vo,
+    about 1400 pages; cloth; with portrait of the author.
+    _New Point Loma Edition with a preface._ Postpaid    $7.00
+
+  =Key to Theosophy, The=; (H. P. Blavatsky). _New Point
+    Loma Edition, with Glossary and exhaustive Index.
+    Portraits of H. P. Blavatsky and W. Q. Judge._ 8vo,
+    cloth, 400 pages. Postpaid                           $2.25
+    _A clear exposition of Theosophy in form of question
+    and answer. The book for students._
+
+  =Nightmare Tales= (H. P. Blavatsky). _Illustrated by R.
+    Machell, R. A._ A collection of the weirdest tales ever
+    written down by any mortal. They contain paragraphs of
+    the profoundest mystical philosophy.
+    Cloth                                                  .60
+    Paper                                                  .35
+
+  =Life at Point Loma, The=: Some notes by Katherine
+    Tingley, Leader and Official Head of the UNIVERSAL
+    BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY                   .15
+    Reprinted from the _Los Angeles Post_, Dec., 1902.
+
+  =Concentration, Culture of= (W. Q. Judge)                .15
+
+  =Hypnotism: Theosophical views on= (40 pages)            .15
+
+  =Light on the Path=; (M. C.) with comments,
+    Bound in black leather                                 .75
+    Embossed paper                                         .25
+
+  =Mysteries of the Heart Doctrine, The.= Prepared by
+    KATHERINE TINGLEY and her pupils. Square, 8vo.
+    Cloth                                                $2.00
+    Paper                                                $1.25
+    A SERIES OF 8 PAMPHLETS comprising the Different
+    Articles in above; paper; each                         .25
+
+  =Secret Doctrine, The.= The Synthesis of Science,
+    Religion, and Philosophy, by H. P. Blavatsky. _New
+    Point Loma Edition._ Two Vols. Royal 8vo., about 1500
+    pages; cloth. Postage prepaid                       $10.00
+    To be reprinted from the original edition of 1888, as
+    published by H. P. BLAVATSKY.
+
+  =Katherine Tingley, Humanity’s friend:=
+    =A Visit to Katherine Tingley= (by John Hubert
+      Greusel);
+    =A Study of Râja Yoga at Point Loma= (Reprint from
+      the San Francisco _Chronicle_, January 6th, 1907).
+      The above three comprised in a pamphlet of 50 pages,
+      published by the Woman’s Theosophical Propaganda
+      League, Point Loma                                   .15
+
+
+Occultism, Studies in
+
+    (H. P. BLAVATSKY). Pocket size, 6 vols., cloth, per
+    set                                                  $1.50
+
+  =Vol. 1.= Practical Occultism. Occultism _vs._ the
+    Occult Arts. The Blessing of Publicity                 .35
+
+  =Vol. 2.= Hypnotism. Black Magic in Science, Signs of
+    the Times                                              .35
+
+  =Vol. 3.= Psychic and Noetic Action                      .35
+
+  =Vol. 4.= Kosmic Mind. Dual Aspect of Wisdom             .35
+
+  =Vol. 5.= Esoteric Character of the Gospels              .35
+
+  =Vol. 6.= Astral Bodies; Constitution of the Inner Man   .35
+
+
+The Path Series
+
+SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR INQUIRERS
+
+_Already published:_
+
+  =No. 1. The purpose of the Universal Brotherhood and
+    Theosophical Society=                                  .05
+
+  =No. 2. Theosophy Generally Stated= (W. Q. Judge)        .05
+
+  =No. 3. Mislaid Mysteries= (Herbert Coryn, M. D.)        .05
+      Thirty copies $1.00; one hundred copies $3.00
+
+  =No. 4. Theosophy and Its Counterfeits=                  .05
+      Thirty copies $1.00; one hundred copies $3.00
+
+
+Theosophical Manuals
+
+ELEMENTARY HANDBOOKS FOR STUDENTS
+
+  Cloth, Price each                                        .35
+
+  No.  1. Elementary Theosophy.
+  No.  2. The Seven Principles of Man.
+  No.  3. Karma.
+  No.  4. Reincarnation.
+  No.  5. Man after Death.
+  No.  6. Kâmaloka and Devachan.
+  No.  7. Teachers and Their Disciples.
+  No.  8. The Doctrine of Cycles.
+  No.  9. Psychism, Ghostology, and the Astral Plane.
+  No. 10. The Astral Light.
+  No. 11. Psychometry, Clairvoyance, and Thought-Transference.
+  No. 12. The Angel and the Demon (2 vols., 35c. each)
+  No. 13. The Flame and the Clay.
+  No. 14. On God and Prayer.
+  No. 15. Theosophy: The Mother of Religions.
+  No. 16. From Crypt to Pronaos.
+            An Essay on the Rise and Fall of Dogma.
+  No. 17. Earth.
+            Its Parentage; its Rounds and its Races.
+  No. 18. Sons of the Firemist.
+            A Study of Man.
+
+These Manuals contain some of the latest thought on the above technical
+subjects. Each volume is arranged to be complete in itself, though
+forming a necessary member of the series. It is intended to add others
+from time to time, to cover most of the technical aspects of Theosophy
+in a direct and simple way, thus forming a Theosophical library of
+inestimable value to inquirers. No one interested in Theosophy can
+afford to do without them.
+
+
+Lotus Group Literature
+
+LOTUS LIBRARY FOR CHILDREN
+
+_Introduced under the direction of Katherine Tingley_
+
+  =1. The Little Builders, and their Voyage to Rangi=
+    (R. N.)                                                .50
+
+  =2. The Coming of the King= (Machell); cloth, gilt
+    edges                                                  .35
+
+  =Lotus Song Book.= Fifty original songs with copyrighted
+    music; boards                                          .50
+
+  =Lotus Song=—“_The Sun Temple_” with music               .15
+
+
+New Century Series
+
+_The Pith and Marrow of Some Sacred Writings._
+
+  Ten Pamphlets, issued serially; Scripts, each            .25
+
+  Subscription, for the set                              $1.50
+
+_Already published:_
+
+  =Script 1.= _Contents_: The Relation of Universal
+    Brotherhood to Christianity—No Man Can Serve Two
+    Masters—In this Place is a Greater Thing
+
+  =Script 2.= _Contents_: A Vision of Judgment—The “Woes”
+    of the Prophets—The Great Victory—Fragment; from
+    Bhagavad Gita—Co-Heirs with Christ—Jesus the Man (the
+    only known personal description)
+
+  =Script 3.= _Contents_: The Lesson of Israel’s
+    History—The Man Born Blind—Man’s Divinity and
+    Perfectibility—The Everlasting Covenant—The Burden of
+    the Lord
+
+  =Script 4.= _Contents_: Reincarnation in the Bible—The
+    Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven—The Temple of
+    God—The Heart Doctrine—The Money Changers in the Temple
+
+  =Script 5.= _Contents_: Egypt and Prehistoric
+    America—Theoretical and Practical Theosophy—Death, One
+    of the Crowning Victories of Human Life—Reliance on the
+    Law—Led by the Spirit of God
+
+  =Script 6.= _Contents_: Education Through Illusion
+    to Truth—Astronomy in the Light of Ancient
+    Wisdom—Occultism and Magic—Resurrection
+
+  =Script 7.= _Contents_: Theosophy and Islam, a
+    word concerning Sufism—Archaeology in the light of
+    Theosophy—Man, a Spiritual Builder
+
+
+
+
+THEOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS
+
+CENTURY PATH
+
+ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY
+
+Edited by KATHERINE TINGLEY
+
+A Magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, the Promulgation
+of Theosophy and the Study of Ancient and Modern Ethics, Philosophy,
+Science and Art.
+
+  Year $4.00                              Single Copy 10 Cents
+
+  Write for a sample copy to
+            NEW CENTURY CORPORATION,
+                      Point Loma, California, U. S. A.
+
+  =Râja Yoga Messenger.= _Illustrated._ Monthly. Yearly
+    subscription                                           .50
+      Unsectarian publication for Young Folk, conducted
+      by a staff of pupils of the Râja School at Lomaland
+  Address MASTER ALBERT G. SPALDING, Business Manager
+  =Râja Yoga Messenger=, Point Loma, California
+
+  =International Theosophical Chronicle.= _Illustrated._
+    Monthly. Yearly subscription, postpaid               $1.00
+    The Theosophical Book Co., 18 Bartlett’s Buildings,
+    Holborn Circus, London, E. C.
+
+  =Theosophia.= _Illustrated._ Monthly. Yearly
+    subscription postpaid                                 1.50
+    Universella Broderskapets Förlag, Barnhusgatan 10,
+    Stockholm 1, Sweden.
+
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+    Yearly subscription, postpaid                         1.50
+    J. Th. Heller, ob. Turnstrasse 3, Nürnberg, Germany
+
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+    subscription, postpaid                                 .75
+    A. Goud, Peperstraat, ingang Papengang, No. 14,
+    Groningen, Holland
+
+Subscriptions to the above four Magazines may be secured also through
+_The Theosophical Publishing Company_, Point Loma, California
+
+
+  _Neither the editors of the above publications, nor the officers
+    of the_ UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, _or of
+    any of its departments, receive salaries or other remuneration_.
+
+  _All profits arising from the business of the Theosophical
+    Publishing Co. are devoted to Humanitarian Work. All who assist
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+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note
+
+
+The following corrections have been made, on page
+
+7 “situa-ation” changed to “situation” (a clearer comprehension of the
+situation)
+
+13 ” added (perish in the Ocean of Mâyâ.”)
+
+14 “sanctury” changed to “sanctuary” (had only peeped into the
+sanctuary)
+
+16 “sancity” changed to “sanctity” (purity and sanctity of their lives)
+
+67 “proceded” changed to “proceeded” (I proceeded without delay)
+
+68 “wierdness” changed to “weirdness” (are heard in all their weirdness)
+
+72 “unaccoutably” changed to “unaccountably” (had so unaccountably
+disappeared ten years before)
+
+97 “unforseen” changed to “unforeseen” (the premature and unforeseen
+formation)
+
+112 “unparalled” changed to “unparalleled” (The unparalleled artist
+arrived)
+
+133 “the the” changed to “the” (he carefully rosined the bow)
+
+142 “in in” changed to “in” (in many cases they permit).
+
+Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual and
+inconsistent spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
+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: Nightmare Tales
+
+Author: H. P. Blavatsky
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTMARE TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by eagkw, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Note: Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_, bold
+with =signs=, and transcribed Greek with +signs+. Small capitals have
+been changed to all capitals. A more extensive transcriber's note can be
+found at the end of this book.
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
+                   Point Loma, California]
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+  _By_
+
+
+  H. P. BLAVATSKY
+
+
+  The Aryan Theosophical Press
+  Point Loma, California,
+  U. S. A.
+  1907
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                               PAGE
+  A BEWITCHED LIFE                1
+
+  THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES         65
+
+  THE LUMINOUS SHIELD            81
+
+  FROM THE POLAR LANDS           95
+
+  THE ENSOULED VIOLIN           103
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A BEWITCHED LIFE
+
+(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had
+descended over the streets of A----, a small town on the Rhine, and was
+hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The
+greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day's work,
+had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay their
+aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all
+was quiet in the deserted streets.
+
+I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and
+sickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still was
+everything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness
+seemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,
+as it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonous
+singing so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had
+listened to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into
+the sound of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when,
+suddenly changing its character, the ever growing "singing" merged
+into other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first
+scarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
+strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voice
+speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrously
+acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so pure
+that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.
+Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, to
+me, owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voice
+familiar for long years and ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mental
+or physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
+consolation.
+
+"Courage," it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. "Think of the days
+passed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of
+Nature's truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;
+and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
+narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shorten
+the hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder before you!"
+
+"Yonder" meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the other
+side of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own in
+almost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windows
+of my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gaze
+towards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget the
+agony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.
+
+Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,
+whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly
+uncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous
+light, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected
+a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky--first from outside,
+then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongating
+itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the street
+from the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed.
+As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite house
+itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms had
+changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew to
+be a Swiss ch�let--into a study, whose old, dark walls were covered
+from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquated
+folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the center stood
+a large old-fashioned table, littered over with manuscripts and
+writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat an old man; a
+grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so thin, so pale,
+yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student's
+lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheek-bones, as
+though they were carved out of ivory.
+
+As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon my
+pillows, the whole vision, ch�let and study, desk, books and scribe,
+seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they approached nearer
+and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge of
+clouds across the street, they floated through the closed windows into
+my room and finally seemed to settle beside my bed.
+
+[Illustration: "I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A BRIGHT
+COLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALL
+VOICE OF THE QUILL."]
+
+"Listen to what he thinks and is going to write"--said in soothing tones
+the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. "Thus you will hear a
+narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long sleepless
+hours, and even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!"--it
+added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic formula.
+
+I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention on the
+solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did not
+see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old man
+was writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered
+murmur of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught the
+indistinct words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figure
+before me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloud
+instead of writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my
+gaze at the old scribe's face, I saw at a glance that his lips were
+compressed and motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his
+voice. Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand,
+I noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored spark
+that became instantaneously a sound, or--what is the same thing--it
+seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small voice
+of the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the time,
+perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will happen
+occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade, as Byron
+tells us, we
+
+    ... learn the language of another world ...
+
+However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my memory
+for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining them, for
+when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual, indelibly
+impressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.
+
+Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed to
+learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless, though
+the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for the
+occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, prove
+none the less interesting.
+
+
+I
+
+THE STRANGER'S STORY
+
+My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss cottages,
+hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down glaciers and a
+peak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, I
+returned--crippled mentally and physically--to die, if death would only
+have me. The pure invigorating air of my birth-place decided otherwise.
+I am still alive; perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts
+I have kept profoundly secret from all--a tale of horror I would rather
+hide than reveal. The reason for this unwillingness on my part is due
+to my early education, and to subsequent events that gave the lie to
+my most cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined to regard
+these events as providential: I, however, believe in no Providence, and
+yet am unable to attribute them to mere chance. I connect them as the
+ceaseless evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct causes,
+with one primary and fundamental cause, from which ensued all that
+followed. A feeble old man am I now, yet physical weakness has in no
+way impaired my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details of
+that terrible cause, which engendered such fatal results. It is these
+which furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence of
+one whom I fain would regard--oh, that I could do so!--as a creature
+born of my fancy, the evanescent production of a feverish, horrid
+dream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly and
+respected Being! It was that paragon of all the virtues who embittered
+my whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently out of the
+monotonous but secure groove of daily life, was the first to force upon
+me the certitude of a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horror
+to one already great enough.
+
+With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must
+interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how, if
+I could, would I obliterate that hated _Self_!
+
+Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the whole
+world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J.�J. Rousseau
+and D'Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a
+thorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even
+pictured to myself any beings--least of all a Being--above or even
+outside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded
+everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of
+the physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing
+man has one, must be material. According to Origen's definition,
+_incorporeus_[1]--the epithet he gave to his God--signifies a substance
+only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best,
+we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses
+cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make
+itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
+
+      [1] +as�matos+.
+
+Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with a
+feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certain
+priests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latter
+feeling has never entirely abandoned me.
+
+Pascal, in the eighth Act of his "Thoughts," confesses to a most
+complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I
+too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such
+extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
+words in which he tells us: "I have examined if this God of whom all
+the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look
+everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers
+me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude." Nor
+have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely
+similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall
+I ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
+proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some
+persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. My
+whole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in such
+phenomena, and--I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoever
+means generated.
+
+On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost the
+greater part of my fortune, and resolved--for the sake of those I loved
+best, rather than for my own--to make another for myself. My elder
+sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer of
+a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.
+
+For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the
+confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I
+was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,
+in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
+Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy
+of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being
+called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the
+most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of
+the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in
+turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,
+Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.
+
+Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was not
+cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions
+on this subject altered. I derided the pretentions of the Japanese
+bonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
+Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers unknown
+to, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at all such
+ideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shun
+the pleasures of life, to put to rout one's passions, to render oneself
+insensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order to acquire such
+chimerical powers--seemed supremely ridiculous in my eyes.
+
+On a day for ever memorable to me--a fatal day--I made the acquaintance
+of a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest, named Tamoora
+Hideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from that
+moment he became my best and most trusted friend. Notwithstanding my
+great and genuine regard for him, however, whenever a good opportunity
+was offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions, thereby
+very often hurting his feelings.
+
+But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist's
+heart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even when
+they were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generally
+limited his replies to the "wait and see" kind of protest. Nor could he
+be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of the
+existence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms "atheism"
+and "scepticism" was beyond the comprehension of his otherwise
+extremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverential
+Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of sense
+should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modern
+science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full of Gods and
+spirits, dzins and demons. "Man is a spiritual being," he insisted,
+"who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or punished in
+the between times." The proposition that man is nothing else but a heap
+of organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused to
+admit that he was no better than "a stalking machine, a speaking head
+without a soul in it," whose "thoughts are all bound by the laws of
+motion." "For," he argued, "if my actions were, as you say, prescribed
+beforehand, and I had no more liberty or free will to change the course
+of my action than the running waters of the river yonder, then the
+glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and demerit, would be foolishness
+indeed."
+
+Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend's ontology rested on
+the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied "just" Law of
+Retribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
+
+"We cannot," said he paradoxically one day, "hope to live hereafter in
+the full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for it
+beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laugh
+not, friend of no faith," he meekly pleaded, "but rather think and
+reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in Spirit
+during his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly hope to
+enjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his body, he
+is limited to that Spirit alone."
+
+"What can you mean by life in Spirit?"--I inquired.
+
+"Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call _Tushita
+Devaloka_ (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for
+himself between two births, by the gradual transference on to that
+plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
+through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain."...
+
+"How absurd! And how can man do this?"
+
+"Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods, will
+enable him to do so."
+
+"And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, I
+suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes of
+him after the death of his body?" was my mocking question.
+
+"He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his
+consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best--immediate
+rebirth; at worst--the state of _avitchi_, a mental hell. Yet one need
+not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to
+the hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach Spirit."
+
+"How so? Even when disbelieving in it?"--I rejoined.
+
+"Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one's nature room for
+doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it
+but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this will
+prove sufficient for the purpose."
+
+"You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.
+Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?"
+
+"There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that some
+unknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existence
+of which you think you have reasons to deny, is the 'spiritual plane'
+of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads you
+towards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and look
+within. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you have
+established an everlasting connexion between your consciousness and the
+temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate the
+fact of your having entered it. And according to the character and the
+variety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live in it
+after your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh."
+
+"What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness--if such a
+thing exists--to do with the temple?"
+
+"It has everything to do with it," solemnly rejoined the old man.
+"There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the temple
+of spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alone
+survive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish
+in the Ocean of M�y�."
+
+Amused at the idea of living outside one's body, I urged on my old
+friend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning, the venerable man
+willingly consented.
+
+Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzi-Onene, a Buddhist
+monastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibet
+and China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the
+sect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among the
+many erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected and
+allied with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the
+doctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
+my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby to
+cure me of my infidelity.
+
+No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly
+involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his
+ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world--as
+for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the
+"spiritual plane" he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself
+worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given
+several hours daily to "contemplation." Thus _he knew_ (?!) that after
+he had laid aside his mortal casket, "a mere illusion," he explained--he
+would in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling
+of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or _ought to have
+had_--only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane had
+been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages of
+the laborer would prove proportionate.
+
+"But suppose the laborer, as in the example you have just brought
+forward in my case, should have no more than opened the temple door out
+of mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his
+foot therein again. What then?"
+
+"Then," he answered, "you would have only this short minute to record
+in your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafter
+records and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in our
+spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of reverence
+at the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been harboring
+in your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual life
+would be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record, save
+the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper."
+
+"How then could it be repeated?"--I insisted, highly amused. "What do
+you suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?"
+
+"In that case," he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word--"in
+that case, _you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the temple
+door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would
+seem to you an eternity_."
+
+This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, so
+grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almost
+inextinguishable fit of laughter.
+
+My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result
+of his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected such
+hilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me
+with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.
+
+"Pray excuse my laughter," I apologized. "But really, now, you cannot
+seriously mean to tell me that the 'spiritual state' you advocate and
+so firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do in
+life?"
+
+"Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling
+the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition
+of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual
+plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and
+no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of
+_Soul-Vision_, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be
+blamed.... What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual
+state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition
+of every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had been
+barren, there could be no results expected--save the repetition of that
+act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds
+and finally made to see certain truths." And passing through the usual
+Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.
+
+Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learned since, how
+little would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!
+
+But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I felt
+for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas about
+an after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men of
+supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence
+for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land.
+Their claims to the "miraculous" were simply odious to my notions. To
+hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest
+of all the business men I had come across in the East--mentioning these
+followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands,
+and affirmations of their possessing "great" and "wonderful" gifts,
+was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And
+who were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculous
+pretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these "holy beggars" who, as I
+then thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains
+and on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the better to afford no
+chance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them in
+their own dens? Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies
+who sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those who
+sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life,
+admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do accept
+pupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and
+that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity
+of their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest
+negation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils,
+classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and
+I went so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoism
+or _Sin-Syu_, "faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods," that
+is, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, is
+a kind of worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more
+miserably absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knaves
+of other sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritual
+teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of
+Society, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and
+the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men
+in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart, nor
+do they pass any ordination--at any rate none known to outsiders. And as
+they claim publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress
+being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply in
+the world's opinion professors and students of occult and spiritual
+sciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the least
+suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
+
+Years passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable scepticism grew
+stronger and waxed fiercer every day. I have already mentioned an elder
+and much-beloved sister, my only surviving relative. She had married
+and had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded her with feelings
+more filial than fraternal, and her children were as dear to me as
+might have been my own. At the time of the great catastrophe that in
+the course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune, and
+my mother break her heart, she it was, that sweet big sister of mine,
+who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined
+family. Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for whom she
+attempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded,
+she had renounced her own happiness. She sacrificed herself and the man
+she loved, by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to help
+our father and chiefly myself by her undivided devotion. And, oh, how I
+loved and reverenced her, time but strengthening this earliest family
+affection! They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a true
+friend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject, utter--whether
+consciously or unconsciously--the greatest calumny and lie. To say that
+a materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot love
+as a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.
+
+There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but these are found
+only occasionally in men who are even more selfish than they are
+sceptical, or vulgarly worldly. But when a man who is kindly disposed
+in his nature, for no selfish motives but because of reason and love
+of truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only strengthened
+in his family affections, and in his sympathies with his fellow men.
+All his emotions, all the ardent aspirations towards the unseen and
+unreachable, all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly
+bestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God, become now centered
+with tenfold force upon his loved ones and mankind. Indeed, the
+atheist's heart alone--
+
+                          ... can know,
+    What secret tides of still enjoyment flow
+    When brothers love....
+
+It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice my
+comfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness, the felicity
+of her who had been more than a mother to me. I was a mere youth
+when I left home for Hamburg. There, working with all the desperate
+earnestness of a man who has but one noble object in view--to relieve
+suffering, and help those whom he loves--I very soon secured the
+confidence of my employers, who raised me in consequence to the high
+post of trust I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward in
+life was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for my
+sake, and to help them in their struggle for existence. So purifying
+and unselfish was this affection of mine for her that when it came
+to be shared among her children, instead of losing in intensity by
+such division, it seemed only to grow the stronger. Born with the
+potentiality of the warmest family affection in me, the devotion for my
+sister was so great, that the thought of burning that sacred fire of
+love before any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered my
+head. This was the only church I recognized, the only church wherein I
+worshipped at the altar of holy family affection. In fact this large
+family of eleven persons, including her husband, was the only tie
+that attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine years, had
+I crossed the ocean with the sole object of seeing and pressing these
+dear ones to my heart. I had no other business in the West; and having
+performed this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to work and
+toil for them. For their sake I remained a bachelor, that the wealth I
+might acquire should go undivided to them alone.
+
+We had always corresponded as regularly as the long transit of the then
+very irregular service of the mail-boats would permit. But suddenly
+there came a break in my letters from home. For nearly a year I
+received no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless, more
+apprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I looked for a letter, a
+simple message; and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence were
+fruitless.
+
+"Friend," said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my only confidant,
+"Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and you will feel at rest."
+
+Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I could
+command under the provocation. But, as steamer after steamer came in
+without a word of news, I felt a despair which daily increased in depth
+and fixity. This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, a
+morbid desire to learn--the worst as I then thought. I struggled hard
+with the feeling, but it had the best of me. Only a few months before
+a complete master of myself--I now became an abject slave to fear. A
+fatalist of the school of D'Holbach, I, who had always regarded belief
+in the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophical
+happiness, and as having the most advantageous influence over human
+weaknesses, _I_ felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!
+I had gone so far as to forget the first principle of my doctrine--the
+only one calculated to calm our sorrows, to inspire us with a useful
+submission, namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blind
+destiny, with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be
+overwhelmed--the doctrine that _all is necessary_. Yes; forgetting
+this, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious longing, a stupid,
+disgraceful desire to learn--if not futurity, at any rate that which was
+taking place at the other side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterly
+modified, my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and like a
+weak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my mind to the very verge
+of lunacy in an attempt to look--as I had been told one could sometimes
+do--beyond the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,
+inexplicable silence!
+
+One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable Bonze, Tamoora,
+appeared on the verandah of my low wooden house. I had not visited
+him for many days, and he had come to know how I was. I took the
+opportunity to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I regarded
+with most affectionate respect. With equivocal taste--for which I
+repented almost before the words had been pronounced--I inquired of
+him why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when he
+might have learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogating
+a Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first; but after keenly
+scrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly remarked that he could only
+insist upon what he had advised before. Only one of that holy order
+could give me consolation in my present state.
+
+From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to challenge him to
+prove his assertions. I defied--I said to him--any and every one of his
+alleged magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinking
+of, and what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered that my
+desire could be easily satisfied. There was a Yamabooshi two doors from
+me, visiting a sick Sinto. He would fetch him--if I only said the word.
+
+I said it and _from the moment of its utterance my doom was sealed_.
+
+How shall I find words to describe the scene that followed! Twenty
+minutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed, an old
+Japanese, uncommonly tall and majestic for one of that race, pale,
+thin and emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I had
+expected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned an air of
+calm and dignified composure, the attitude of one who knows his moral
+superiority, and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those who
+fail to recognize it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,
+which I put to him one after another, with feverish eagerness, he made
+no reply; but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at a
+delirious patient. From the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt--or
+shall I say, saw--as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin silvery
+thread, shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeply
+sunk in the yellow old face. It seemed to penetrate into my brain
+and heart like an arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom every
+thought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and very soon the
+double sensation became intolerable.
+
+To break the spell I defied him to tell me what he had found in my
+thoughts. Calmly came the correct answer--Extreme anxiety for a female
+relative, her husband and children, who were inhabiting a house the
+correct description of which he gave as though he knew it as well
+as myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend, the Bonze, to
+whose indiscretions, I thought, I was indebted for the quick reply.
+Remembering however that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearance
+of my sister's house, that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and,
+as friends, faithful to death--I felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atone
+for it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could
+tell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of mine.
+The foreigner--was the reply--would never believe in the words, or trust
+to the knowledge of any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell
+him, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later, and the
+inquirer find himself as miserable as before. There was but one means;
+and that was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and
+thus learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placed
+by a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
+
+I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and pretenders to
+clairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had, therefore, nothing
+against the process itself. Even in the midst of my never-ceasing
+mental agony, I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the
+operation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I silently bowed
+consent.
+
+
+III
+
+PSYCHIC MAGIC
+
+The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, and
+finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who darts
+his Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a
+little bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetable
+paper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with which
+he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the _Naiden_ character--a
+peculiar style of written language used only for religious and mystical
+purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his clothes a small
+round mirror of steel of extraordinary brilliancy, and placing it
+before my eyes, asked me to look into it.
+
+I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently used
+in the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that under
+the direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in them the
+Daij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of their
+fate. I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit,
+who would answer my queries. What happened, however, was something of
+quite a different character.
+
+No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental squeamishness,
+produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position, touched the
+mirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of the
+hand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to "sit in the seat of
+the scorner" and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous point
+of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain, for an instant
+paralyzing its activity--
+
+                                           ... that fear
+    When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?
+
+No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuading
+myself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the nature
+of which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, that
+crept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein
+a sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly
+serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of the
+hand I dropped the--I blush to write the adjective--"magic" mirror, and
+could not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I was
+reclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle between
+some undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to look into
+the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, the
+ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It was finally
+so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own defiant
+intensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table near the
+settee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I read the
+words, "The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy."
+This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto held me back from
+what I regarded as a degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me to
+challenge my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk and prepared
+to look into it.
+
+While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a few
+words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and suspicious
+glance at both. I was wrong once more.
+
+"The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at the
+same time a warning," remarked the Bonze. "If you are willing to see
+for yourself now, you will have--under the penalty of _seeing for ever,
+in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, and
+that against your will or inclination_--to submit to a regular course of
+purification, after you have learned what you want through the mirror."
+
+"What is this course, and what have I to promise?" I asked defiantly.
+
+"It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to the
+process, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to hold
+himself responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an
+_irresponsible_ seer of you. Will you do so, friend?"
+
+"There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything"--I
+sneeringly replied, adding under my breath--"something I doubt a good
+deal, so far."
+
+"Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain with
+yourself," was the solemn answer.
+
+I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which was
+remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just _seven minutes
+after five_.
+
+"Define well in your mind _what_ you would see and learn," said the
+"conjuror," placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructing
+me how to use them.
+
+His instructions were received by me with more impatience than
+gratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless I
+replied, while fixing the mirror:
+
+"_I desire but one thing--to learn the reason or reasons why my sister
+has so suddenly ceased writing to me._"...
+
+Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the two
+witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide the
+point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
+the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this process
+lasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able to
+settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every
+detail of the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror with
+the left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic characters
+between the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden I
+seemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. The
+passage from the active waking state to one that I could compare with
+nothing I had ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes
+had ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight
+of the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless
+distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaning
+forward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation of
+an involuntary rush forward, of _snapping_ off, so to say, from my
+place--I had almost said from my body. And, then, while every one of
+my other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I thought,
+unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid glimpse than they had
+ever had in reality, of my sister's new house at Nuremberg, which I had
+never visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery with which
+I had never been very familiar. Together with this, and while feeling
+in my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing consciousness--dying
+persons must feel so, no doubt--the very last, vague thought, so weak
+as to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, _very_
+ridiculous.... This _feeling_--for such it was rather than a thought--was
+interrupted, suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear _mental
+vision_ (I cannot characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which
+I regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on the
+settee, dead to all intents and purposes, but still staring with the
+cold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with
+his two emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over _its_
+white face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt
+at that instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going,
+in thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old
+men, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a
+reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from "me." A
+few more grotesque, distorted shadows before "my" sight; and, with a
+last feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise _who then was I
+now, since I was not that corpse_--a great veil of darkness fell over
+me, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.
+
+
+IV
+
+A VISION OF HORROR
+
+How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had once
+more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that
+I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strange
+sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on my
+part, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself to
+me was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and
+stifling air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of the
+presence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, to
+repeat my last sentence, "I desire but one thing: to learn the reason
+or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me"--but the
+only words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, "_to learn_,"
+and these, instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back to
+me in my own voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me.
+In short, they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
+
+One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
+Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myself
+standing--actually standing--underground, as it seemed. I was compactly
+and thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left,
+with earth, and _in_ the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemed
+quite immaterial and transparent to _my senses_. I did not realize
+for one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that
+_seeming_ fact! One second more, one short instant, and I perceived--oh,
+inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then, although I
+perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far more clearly
+than ever I had done before, I did not seem to be touched in any other
+way by what I saw. Yes--I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a plain
+unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch of the pauper,
+in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly saw a hideous,
+grinning skull, a man's skeleton, mutilated and broken in many of its
+parts, as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the
+defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture. "Who can
+it be?"--I thought.
+
+At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice--_my_
+voice ... "_the reason or reasons why_" ... it said; as though these
+words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which
+it had just repeated the two words "to learn." It sounded near, and
+yet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea that
+the long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions and
+discoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
+almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of
+the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself
+in my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,
+broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice....
+
+Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, and
+to me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined together
+one to the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, and
+I recognized in these disfigured remains--with some surprise, but not
+a trace of feeling at the sight--my sister's dead husband, my own
+brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. "How was it,
+and how did he come to die such a terrible death?"--I asked myself. To
+put oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantly
+solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when, as if in a
+panorama, I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl's death, in all
+its horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one of
+which, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Here
+he is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect of
+more lucrative employment from his principal, examining and trying in a
+wood-sawing factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America.
+He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten
+a screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel
+in full motion, and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his
+limbs half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the
+mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead,
+mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of palpitating flesh
+and blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap to
+the hospital, hear the brutally given order that the messengers of
+death should stop on their way at the house of the widow and orphans.
+I follow them, and find the unconscious family quietly assembled
+together. I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferent
+at the sight, only feeling highly interested in the coming scene. My
+heart, my feelings, even my personality, seemed to have disappeared, to
+have been left behind, to belong to somebody else.
+
+There "I" stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastly
+news. I realize clearly, without one moment's hesitation or mistake,
+the effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly, following and
+recording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner process
+that takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing not one single
+point.
+
+As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear
+the long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud of
+the living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I follow
+with curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation
+in her brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,
+precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibers,
+the instantaneous change of color in the cephalic extremity of the
+nervous system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright
+red and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden flash of
+a phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its sudden
+extinction followed by darkness--complete darkness in the region of
+memory--as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human shape,
+oozes out suddenly from the top of the head, expands, loses its form
+and scatters. And I say to myself: "This is insanity; life-long,
+incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed
+or extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the tabernacle for
+ever, ejected from it by the terrible force of the sudden blow.... The
+link between the animal and the divine essence is broken."... And as
+the unfamiliar term "divine" is mentally uttered _my_ "THOUGHT"--laughs.
+
+Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing
+emphatically and close by me the words ... "_why my sister has so
+suddenly ceased writing_."... And before the two final words "_to
+me_" have completed the sentence, I see a long series of sad events,
+immediately following the catastrophe.
+
+I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunatic
+asylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger children
+admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy
+of fifteen, and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
+strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carries
+away my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the events
+with all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to the
+smallest detail, with the utmost coolness.
+
+For, mark well: when I use such expressions as "horrors," etc., they
+are to be understood as an after-thought. During the whole time of the
+events described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My
+feelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external senses; it was
+only after "coming back" that I realized my irretrievable losses to
+their full extent.
+
+Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days, owing to
+sad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been told by anyone
+at that time, that man could act and think and feel, irrespective of
+his brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and to this day,
+for me, incomprehensible power, _he_ could be transported _mentally_,
+thousands of miles away from his body, there to witness not only
+present but also past events, and remember these by storing them in
+his memory--I would have proclaimed that man a madman. Alas, I can do
+so no longer, for I have become myself that "madman." Ten, twenty,
+forty, a hundred times during the course of this wretched life of mine,
+have I experienced and lived over such moments of existence, _outside
+of my body_. Accursed be that hour when this terrible power was first
+awakened in me! I have not even the consolation left of attributing
+such glimpses of events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see
+that which exists not in the realm they belong to. My visions have
+proved _invariably correct_. But to my narrative of woe.
+
+I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her new
+Israelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the one
+that had sent me "swimming" through the bowels of the earth, as I had
+thought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I fixed
+upon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial showed seven
+minutes and a half past five!... I had thus passed through these most
+terrible experiences, which it takes me hours to narrate, _in precisely
+half a minute of time_!
+
+But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief instant I
+recollected nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the time I
+had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi's
+hand and this second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I was just
+opening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi with his experiment, when
+the full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning-like
+into my brain. Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as though
+the whole creation were crushing me under its weight. For one moment I
+remained speechless, the picture of human ruin amid a world of death
+and desolation. My heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; and
+a hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever.
+
+
+V
+
+RETURN OF DOUBTS
+
+Then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt arose in my
+mind, which forthwith grew into a fierce desire of denying the truth of
+what I had seen. A stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as
+an empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained mind, took
+possession of me. Yes; it was but a lying vision, an idiotic cheating
+of my own senses, suggesting pictures of death and misery which had
+been evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental depression.
+
+"How could I see all that I have seen in less than half a minute?"--I
+exclaimed. "The theory of dreams, the rapidity with which the material
+changes on which our ideas in vision depend, are excited in the
+hemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for the long series of
+events I have seemed to experience. In dream alone can the relations
+of space and time be so completely annihilated. The Yamabooshi is for
+nothing in this disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that which
+has been sown by myself, and, by using some infernal drug, of which his
+tribe have the secret, he has contrived to make me lose consciousness
+for a few seconds and see that vision--as lying as it is horrid. Avaunt
+all such thoughts, I believe them not. In a few days there will be a
+steamer sailing for Europe.... I shall leave to-morrow!"
+
+This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud, regardless of the
+presence of my respected friend the Bonze, Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi.
+The latter was standing before me in the same position as when he
+placed the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at me calmly, I should
+perhaps say looking _through_ me, and in dignified silence. The Bonze,
+whose kind countenance was beaming with sympathy, approached me as he
+would a sick child, and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tears
+in his eyes, said: "Friend, you must not leave this city before you
+have been completely purified of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins
+(spirits), who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the
+places it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner Self must be closed
+against their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore, my son, and
+allow the holy Master yonder, to purify you at once."
+
+But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused. "The sap of
+reason" could no longer "quench the fire of passion," and at that
+moment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is a face
+I can never recall to my memory without genuine feeling; his, a name
+I will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that ever
+memorable hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I felt
+almost a hatred for the kind, good old man, I could not forgive him his
+interference in the present event. Hence, for all answer, therefore, he
+received from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on my part against
+the idea that I could ever regard the vision I had had, in any other
+light save that of an empty dream, and his Yamabooshi as anything
+better than an impostor. "I will leave to-morrow, had I to forfeit my
+whole fortune as a penalty"--I exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
+
+"You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so before the
+holy man has shut every entrance in you against intruders ever on
+the watch and ready to enter the open door," was the answer. "The
+Daij-Dzins will have the best of you."
+
+I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more brutally
+phrased inquiry about the _fees_ I was expected to give the Yamabooshi,
+for his experiment with me.
+
+"He needs no reward," was the reply. "The order he belongs to is the
+richest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for they are
+above all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him not, the good man
+who came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering, and to
+relieve you of mental agony."
+
+But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom. The spirit of
+rebellion and pride had taken possession of me, and made me disregard
+every feeling of personal friendship, or even of simple propriety.
+Luckily for me, on turning round to order the mendicant monk out of my
+presence, I found he had gone.
+
+I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure to fear
+at having been detected and understood.
+
+Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognize
+the Yamabooshi's power, and that the peace of my whole life was
+departing with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail.
+Even the fell demon of my long fears--uncertainty--was now entirely
+overpowered by that fiend scepticism--the silliest of all. A dull,
+morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses,
+and a determined will to regard the whole vision as a fancy of my
+overwrought mind, had taken firm hold of me.
+
+"My mind," I argued, "what is it? Shall I believe with the
+superstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and gray
+matter is indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and see
+independently of my physical senses? Never! As well believe in the
+planetary 'intelligences' of the astrologer, as in the 'Daij-Dzins' of
+my credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confess
+one's belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that these
+worthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals,
+as to give one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to
+have guided my 'soul' in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh at
+the absurd idea. I regard it as a personal insult to the intellect
+and rational reasoning powers of a man, to speak of invisible
+creatures, '_subjective_ intelligences,' and all that kind of insane
+superstition." In short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his
+protests, and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever.
+
+Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman, doing
+all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of my
+having gone suddenly mad. But his admirable forbearance proved more
+than equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once more, for the
+sake of my whole future, to submit to certain "necessary purificatory
+rites."
+
+"Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing by the air-pump
+of wholesome unbelief, than in the dim fog of silly superstition,"
+I argued, paraphrazing Richter's remark. "I will not believe," I
+repeated; "but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my sister
+and her family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe."
+
+This final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. His
+earnest prayer not to depart before I had seen the Yamabooshi once
+more, received no attention from me.
+
+"Friend of a foreign land!"--he cried, "I pray that you may not repent
+of your unbelief and rashness. May the 'Holy One' (Kwan-On, the Goddess
+of Mercy) protect you from the Dzins! For, since you refuse to submit
+to the process of purification at the hands of the holy Yamabooshi,
+he is powerless to defend you from the evil influences evoked by your
+unbelief and defiance of truth. But let me, at this parting hour, I
+beseech you, let me, an older man who wishes you well, warn you once
+more and persuade you of things you are still ignorant of. May I speak?"
+
+"Go on and have your say," was the ungracious assent. "But let me warn
+you, in my turn, that nothing you can say can make of me a believer in
+your disgraceful superstitions." This was added with a cruel feeling of
+pleasure in bestowing one more needless insult.
+
+But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others.
+Never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting words, the
+pitying, remorseful look on his face when he found that it was, indeed,
+all to no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference he had only
+led me to my destruction.
+
+"Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time," he began, "learn that
+unless the holy and venerable man, who, to relieve your distress,
+opened your 'soul vision,' is permitted to complete his work, your
+future life will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguard
+you against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character.
+Unless you consent to it of your own free will, however, you will have
+to be left in the power of _Forces_ which will harass and persecute you
+to the verge of insanity. Know that the development of 'Long Vision'
+(clairvoyance)--which is accomplished _at will_ only by those for whom
+the Mother of Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no secrets--must, in the
+case of the beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins (elemental
+spirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence wicked. Know also that,
+while the Arihat, 'the destroyer of the enemy,' who has subjected and
+made of these creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he who
+has no power over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in your
+great pride and ignorance, but listen further. During the time of the
+vision and while the inner perceptions are directed towards the events
+they seek, the Daij-Dzin has the seer--when, like yourself, he is an
+inexperienced tyro--entirely in its power; and for the time being _that
+seer is no longer himself_. He partakes of the nature of his 'guide.'
+The Daij-Dzin, which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance
+vile, making of him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself.
+Bereft of his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence during
+the time of such connection, he will feel no human emotions, neither
+pity nor fear, love nor mercy."
+
+"Hold!" I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought
+back to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed
+my sister's despair and sudden loss of reason in my "hallucination."
+"Hold!... But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any
+sense in your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerous
+why have advised the experiment at all?"--I added mockingly.
+
+"It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could have resulted from
+it, had you kept your promise to submit to purification," was the sad
+and humble reply. "I wished you well, my friend, and my heart was nigh
+breaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment is harmless
+when directed by _one who knows_, and becomes dangerous only when the
+final precaution is neglected. It is the 'Master of Visions,' he who
+has opened an entrance into your soul, who has to close it by using the
+Seal of Purification against any further and deliberate ingress of...."
+
+"The 'Master of Visions,' forsooth!" I cried, brutally interrupting
+him, "say rather the Master of Imposture!"
+
+The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful to
+behold that I perceived I had gone too far; but it was too late.
+
+"Farewell, then!" said the old bonze, rising; and after performing the
+usual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora left the house in dignified
+silence.
+
+
+VI
+
+I DEPART--BUT NOT ALONE
+
+Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerable
+friend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for ever
+memorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more than
+irreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he so justly
+respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and pride
+was too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment of
+remorse. What was it that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath,
+that when, for one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposed
+grievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed myself back into a
+kind of artificial fury against him. He had only accomplished what he
+had been expected to do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so,
+but it was I myself who had deprived him of the possibility of doing
+more, even for my own protection, if I might believe the Bonze--a man
+whom I knew to be thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at
+having been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, or
+was it the fear of remorse that made me rake together, in my heart,
+during those evil hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult to
+that same suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked,
+"is like the heart in which it grows:...
+
+                         ... if proud and gloomy,
+    It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost,
+    Weeps only tears of blood."
+
+Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort which
+caused me to remain so obdurate, and led me to excuse, under the plea
+of terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had heaped
+upon the head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest. However,
+it was now too late in the day to recall the words of offence I had
+uttered; and all I could do was to promise myself the satisfaction of
+writing him a friendly letter, as soon as I reached home. Fool, blind
+fool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was! So sure did I
+feel, that my vision was due merely to some trick of the Yamabooshi,
+that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in writing to the
+Bonze that I had been right in answering his sad words of parting
+with an incredulous smile, as my sister and family were all in good
+health--happy!
+
+I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember his
+words of warning!
+
+From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived a
+great change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to the
+mental depression I had struggled against for so many months. During
+the day I very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes,
+losing sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights were
+disturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at times horrible. Good sailor I
+certainly was; and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the ocean
+as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt a strange
+giddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers assumed at
+such times the most grotesque appearances. Thus, a young German I used
+to know well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old
+father, whom we had laid in the little burial place of the European
+colony some three years before. We were talking on deck of the defunct
+and of a certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner's head
+appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A thick
+greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and upon
+his healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim old head I
+had myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another occasion,
+as the captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had helped to
+secure and lodge in jail, I saw near him the yellow, villainous face
+of a man answering to his description. I kept silence about such
+hallucinations; but as they became more and more frequent, I felt very
+much disturbed, though still attributing them to natural causes, such
+as I had read about in medical books.
+
+One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and loud cry of distress.
+It was a woman's voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of terror
+and of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on land,
+in a strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperately
+struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her in
+her own room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door,
+I saw listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
+expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognized
+it: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dream
+I had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foul
+crime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant.... But who was the
+victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized the
+situation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my own
+child-niece.
+
+But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the nature of that
+despair born of affection that fills one's heart, at the sight of a
+wrong done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing but
+a manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the
+weak and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seized
+the wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with powerful
+grasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to feel my hand.
+The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful
+arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunny
+locks, felled the child to the ground. It was with a loud cry of the
+indignation of a stranger, not with that of a tigress defending her
+cub, that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle him.
+I then remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow myself, I was
+grasping but another shadow!....
+
+My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer. They
+were attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take anyone into my
+confidence; but, from that day forward, my life became a long series of
+mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness
+of some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whether
+past, present or even future--as I ascertained later on. It was as
+though some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of making
+me go through the vision of everything that was bestial, malignant
+and hopeless, in this world of misery. No radiant vision of beauty
+or virtue ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe and
+wretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of
+murder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I was
+brought face to face with the vilest results of man's passions, the
+most terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings.
+
+Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he spoke of
+Daij-Dzins to whom I left "an ingress" "a door open" in me? Nonsense!
+There must be some physiological, abnormal change in me. Once at
+Nuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken by
+my fears--I dared not hope for no misfortune at all--these meaningless
+visions will disappear as they came. The very fact that my fancy
+follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of human
+passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof to me, of their
+unreality.
+
+"If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter, the object
+of the physical senses; and if perception with its modes is only the
+result of the organization of the brain, then should we be naturally
+attracted but to the material, the earthly".... I thought I heard the
+familiar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections, and repeating
+an often used argument of his in his discussions with me.
+
+"There are two planes of visions before men," I again heard him say,
+"the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the efflux from
+the eternal light; and the plane of restless, ever changing matter, the
+light in which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe."
+
+
+VII
+
+ETERNITY IN A SHORT DREAM
+
+In those days I could hardly bring myself to realize, even for a
+moment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind of spirits, whether good
+or bad. I now understood, if I did not believe, what was meant by the
+term, though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove
+some physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To fortify my
+unbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my memory all the arguments
+used against a faith in such superstitions, that I had ever read or
+heard. I recalled the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm reasoning
+of Hume, and I repeated to myself _ad nauseam_ the words of Rousseau,
+who said that superstition, "the disturber of Society," could never
+be too strongly attacked. "Why should the sight, the phantasmagoria,
+rather"--I argued--"of that which we know in a waking sense to be false,
+come to affect us at all?" Why should--
+
+    Names, whose sense we see not
+    Fray us with things that be not?
+
+One day the old captain was narrating to us the various superstitions
+to which sailors were addicted; a pompous English missionary remarked
+that Fielding had declared long ago that "superstition renders a man a
+fool,"--after which he hesitated for an instant, and abruptly stopped.
+I had not taken any part in the general conversation; but no sooner
+had the reverend speaker relieved himself of the quotation, than I saw
+in that halo of vibrating light, which I now noticed almost constantly
+over every human head on the steamer, the words of Fielding's next
+proposition--"and _scepticism makes him mad_."
+
+I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend to seership,
+that they often see the thoughts of people traced in the aura of those
+present. Whatever "aura" may mean with others, I had now a personal
+experience of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently disgusted
+with the discovery! I--a _clairvoyant_! a new horror added to my life,
+an absurd and ridiculous gift developed, which I shall have to conceal
+from all, feeling ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy. At
+this moment my hatred to the Yamabooshi, and even to my venerable old
+friend, the Bonze, knew no bounds. The former had evidently by his
+manipulations over me while I was lying unconscious, touched some
+unknown physiological spring in my brain, and by loosing it had called
+forth a faculty generally hidden in the human constitution; and it was
+the Japanese priest who had introduced the wretch into my house!
+
+But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and could be of no
+avail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and in a few
+more days we should be at Hamburg. Then would my doubts and fears be
+set at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that although
+clairvoyance, as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot, may
+have some truth in it, the discernment of such events at a distance,
+as I had _dreamed of_, was an impossibility for human faculties.
+Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart was sick with
+fear, and full of the blackest presentiments; I _felt_ that my doom
+was closing. I suffered terribly, my nervous and mental prostration
+becoming intensified day by day.
+
+The night before we entered port I had a dream.
+
+I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,
+whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as "I,"
+realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its own
+extinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preserved
+heat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease its
+activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several minutes.
+Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my dream that
+while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf "no mortal e'er
+repassed," its consciousness was still in the gray twilight, the
+first shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my THOUGHT wrapped, as I
+believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality, was
+watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches of its own
+dissolution, _i.e._, of its _annihilation_. "I" was hastening to
+record my last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal oblivion
+should envelope me, before I had time to feel and _enjoy_, the great,
+the supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions were
+true, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of conscious
+being. Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Huge
+gray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first, then with
+accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with an almost
+vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that motion had taken place only
+for purposes of brewing darkness, the object once reached, it slackened
+its speed, and as the darkness became gradually transformed into
+intense blackness, it ceased altogether. There was nothing now within
+my immediate perceptions, but that fathomless black Space, as dark as
+pitch: to me it appeared as limitless and as silent as the shoreless
+Ocean of Eternity upon which Time, the progeny of man's brain, is for
+ever gliding, but which it can never cross.
+
+Dream is defined by Cato as "but the image of our hopes and fears."
+Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream of mine,
+calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt
+rather relieved at the thought--probably owing to my recent mental
+suffering--that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I loved,
+of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The constant
+anguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heart
+for many a long and weary month, had now become unbearable; and
+if as Seneca thinks, death is but "the ceasing to be what we were
+before," it was better that I should die. The body is dead; "I," its
+consciousness--that which is all that remains of me now, for a few
+moments longer--am preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get
+weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time, until the longed
+for oblivion envelopes me completely in its cold shroud. Sweet is the
+magic hand of Death, the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamless
+is sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcome
+guest.... A calm and peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of the
+Ocean of life, whose breakers lash in vain the rock-bound shores of
+Death. Happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of its
+black gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about by the
+angry waves of sentient life. Moored in it for evermore, needing no
+longer either sail or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then,
+O Death, at this tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,
+having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I now readily
+give up!...
+
+While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I bent
+over, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding darkness
+oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied I found
+in it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet ... how
+very strange! If real, final Death takes place in our consciousness;
+if after the bodily death, "I" and my conscious perceptions are
+one--how is it that these perceptions do not become weaker, why does
+my _brain_-action seem as vigorous as ever now ... that I am _de
+facto_ dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety, the "heavy
+heart" so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it even seems to become
+worse ... unspeakably so!... How long it takes for full oblivion to
+arrive!... Ah, here's my body again!... Vanished out of sight for a
+second or two, it reappears before me once more.... How white and
+ghastly it looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead, since "I,"
+its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy that we still
+are, that we live and think, disconnected from our creator and its
+ideating cell.
+
+Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progress
+of dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal on
+the brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its cranial
+cavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of the
+skull, and even _touched the brain-matter_.... How, or with _whose
+hands_, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the slimy,
+intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me, in that
+dream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirely
+congealed and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a change
+that would no longer permit any molecular action, it became impossible
+for me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself.
+Here was I,--or my consciousness, which is all one--standing apparently
+entirely disconnected from my brain which could no longer function....
+But I had no time left for reflection. A new and most extraordinary
+change in my perceptions had taken place and now engrossed my whole
+attention.... What _does_ this signify?...
+
+The same darkness was around me as before, a black, impenetrable space,
+extending in every direction. Only now, right before me, in whatever
+direction I was looking, moving with me which way soever I moved,
+there was a gigantic round clock; a disk, whose large white face shone
+ominously on the ebony-black background. As I looked at its huge dial,
+and at the pendulum moving to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, as
+if its swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles pointing to
+_seven minutes past five_. "The hour at which my torture had commenced
+at Kioto!" I had barely found time to think of the coincidence, when,
+to my unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the same, the
+identical, process that I had been made to experience on that memorable
+and fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly through the earth;
+I found myself once more in the pauper's grave and recognized my
+brother-in-law in the mangled remains; I witnessed his terrible death;
+entered my sister's house; followed her agony, and saw her go mad. I
+went over the same scenes without missing a single detail of them. But,
+alas! I was no longer iron-bound in the calm indifference that had then
+been mine, and which in that first vision had left me as unfeeling to
+my great misfortune as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My
+mental tortures were now becoming beyond description and well-nigh
+unbearable. Even the settled despair, the never ceasing anxiety I was
+constantly experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream and
+in the face of this repetition of visions and events, as an hour of
+darkened sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered in
+this wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction of
+the survival of man's consciousness after death--for in that dream I
+firmly believed that my body was dead--added the most terrifying of all!
+
+The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene,
+I saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not
+of long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the
+colossal disk at--_seven minutes and a-half past five_ o'clock. But,
+before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved slowly
+backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and--O cursed
+fate!... I found myself driven into a repetition of the same series
+over again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard, and
+suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed through every
+mental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to see the fatal dial
+and its needle--after what appeared to me an eternity--moved, as before,
+only half a minute forward. I beheld it, with renewed terror, moving
+back again, and felt myself propelled forward anew. And so it went
+on, and on, and on, time after time, in what seemed to me an endless
+succession, a series which never had any beginning, nor would it ever
+have an end....
+
+Worst of all; my consciousness, my "I," had apparently acquired the
+phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplating
+itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in
+half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various events
+of my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilar
+circumstances; though predominant over all was my _spiritual_
+experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous _fugue_ in _Don Giovanni_,
+the heart-rending notes of Elvira's _aria_ of despair ring high above,
+but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
+seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes,
+the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision,
+the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of my
+despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes
+and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was living
+through again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was a
+maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoria
+from real life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time,
+examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my sister's
+husband; following with the same indifference the effects of the
+news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and feeling _at the
+same time_ hell-torture for these very events, as when I returned to
+consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical discourses of the
+Bonze, every word of which I heard and understood, and was trying
+to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a youth, hearing my
+mother's and my sweet sister's voices, admonishing me and teaching duty
+to all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering at
+his aged father who thanks me for having saved a "soul" yet unprepared
+to meet his Maker.
+
+"Speak of _dual_ consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!"--I cried, in
+one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me physical
+also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killed
+a dozen living men; "speak of your psychological and physiological
+experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and book-learning!
+Here am I to give you the lie...." And now I was reading the works and
+holding converse with learned professors and lecturers, who had led
+me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing the impossibility of
+consciousness divorced from its brain, I was shedding tears of blood
+over the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible than
+all: I knew, _as only a liberated consciousness can know_, that all I
+had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was seeing and hearing
+over and over again now, was true in every point and detail, that it
+was a long string of ghastly and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
+
+For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention on
+the needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and
+was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that
+consciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be
+my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
+experience how the condemned sinners would feel--"were not eternal
+damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever
+progressing Universe"--I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; at
+this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness--now my synonym
+for "I"--had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims,
+of denying all their propositions, all--save ITSELF.... No; I denied the
+independent nature of my consciousness no longer, for I knew it now
+to be such. But is it _eternal_ withal? O thou incomprehensible and
+terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?--since
+there is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when didst thou
+first appear, if thou art not a part of the cold body lying yonder?
+And whither dost thou lead me, who am thyself, and shall our thought
+and fancy have an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomable
+REALITY, and impenetrable MYSTERY! Oh, I would fain annihilate thee....
+"Soul-Vision"!--who speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says
+that I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man, after all.... I
+deny this. My Soul, my vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired
+with my body, with the gray matter of my brain. This "I" of mine, this
+consciousness, is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in
+which the Bonze felt so anxious I should believe may be true.... Why
+not? Is not the flower born year after year from the same root? Hence
+this "I" once separated from its brain, losing its balance, and calling
+forth such a host of visions ... before reincarnating....
+
+I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I was
+watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of the
+depths of its white face, saying: "In this case, I fear, _you would
+only have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,
+during a period which, however short, would seem to you an
+eternity_."...
+
+The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of my
+old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; and
+I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint with
+terror.
+
+
+VIII
+
+A TALE OF WOE
+
+We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who could
+hardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes I started
+for Nuremberg.
+
+Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the
+correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse than
+any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to
+the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible
+tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killed
+under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidly
+sinking towards her end; my niece--the sweet flower of nature's fairest
+work--dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little children dead of a
+contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew at sea,
+no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace, scattered;
+and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolation
+and dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I sank
+helpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which rose before me
+all at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The last thing
+I heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a remark of the
+Burgmeister: "Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the city
+authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of coming home
+to take charge of your young relatives, we might have placed them
+elsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No one knew that
+the children had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers and
+had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively strangers in
+Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardly
+have expected anything else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow."
+
+It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have saved
+my young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect I
+had not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly
+advice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities some
+weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was all
+this, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyance
+and clairaudience--the possibility of which I had so long denied--that
+brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the censure
+of my fellow-creatures, but I could never escape the stings of my
+conscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart--no, not as long as I
+lived. I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts, my early
+education, I cursed myself, and the whole world....
+
+For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I had
+a duty to perform to the dead and to the living. But my sister once
+rescued from the pauper's asylum, placed under the care of the best
+physicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and
+the Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodged
+in jail--my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a
+week after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac,
+helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I lay
+between life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of the
+best physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and--to my
+life-long sorrow--they proclaimed me saved.
+
+I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to drag the loathsome
+burden of life henceforth alone, and in constant remorse; hoping for
+no help or remedy on earth, and still refusing to believe in the
+possibility of anything better than a short survival of consciousness
+beyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added only one more
+drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They were hardly soothed by the
+immediate return, during the first days of my convalescence, of those
+unwelcome and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality I
+could deny no more. Alas the day! they were no longer in my sceptical,
+blind mind--
+
+    The children of an idle brain
+    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
+
+but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferings
+of my fellow creatures, of my best friends.... Thus I found myself
+doomed, whenever I was left for a moment alone, to the helpless
+torture of a chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night,
+as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself led to my
+sister's bedside, forced to watch there hour after hour, and see the
+silent disintegration of her wasted organism; to witness and feel the
+sufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or
+convey to her perceptions. But there was something still more horrible
+to barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had to look, by
+day, at the childish innocent face of my young niece, so sublimely
+simple and guileless in her pollution; and to witness, by night, how
+the full knowledge and recollection of her dishonor, of her young life
+now for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as soon as she was
+asleep. These dreams took an objective form to me, as they had done
+on the steamer; I had to live them over again, night after night,
+and feel the same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the
+reality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our bodies
+lies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis which may contain
+in its turn the butterfly--the symbol of the soul--I no longer remained
+indifferent, as of yore, to what I witnessed in my Soul-life. Something
+had suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy cocoon.
+Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the identification of
+my inner nature with a Daij-Dzin; my visions arose in consequence of a
+direct personal psychic development, the fiendish creatures only taking
+care that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature.
+Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my dying sister's emaciated body,
+not a thrill of horror in my niece's restless sleep at the recollection
+of the crime perpetrated upon her, an innocent child, but found a
+responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The deep fountain of sympathetic
+love and sorrow had gushed out from the physical heart, and was now
+loudly echoed by the awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had I
+to drain the cup of misery to the very dregs! Woe is me, it was a daily
+and nightly torture! Oh, how I mourned over my proud folly; how I was
+punished for having neglected to avail myself at Kioto of the proffered
+purification, for now I had come to believe even in the efficacy of
+the latter. The Daij-Dzin had indeed obtained control over me; and the
+fiend had let loose all the dogs of hell upon his victim....
+
+At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor insane
+martyr dropped into her dark, and now welcome grave, leaving behind
+her, but for a few short months, her young, her first-born, daughter.
+Consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame. Hardly a year
+after my arrival, I was left alone in the whole wide world, my only
+surviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his sea-faring
+career.
+
+And now, the sequel of my sad, sad story is soon told. A wreck, a
+prematurely old man, looking at thirty as though sixty winters had
+passed over my doomed head, and owing to the never-ceasing visions,
+myself daily on the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate
+resolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the Yamabooshi. I
+would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man, and would not
+leave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised, the
+Frankenstein with whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would not
+part, through my insolent pride and unbelief.
+
+Three months later I was in my Japanese home again, and I at once
+sought out my old, venerable Bonze, Tamoora Hideyeri, I now implored
+him to take me without an hour's delay, to the Yamabooshi, the innocent
+cause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the last, the supreme
+seal on my doom and tenfold intensified my despair. The Yamabooshi had
+left the country for lands unknown! He had departed one fine morning
+into the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to custom, would be
+absent, unless natural death shortened the period, for no less than
+seven years!...
+
+In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to other learned
+Yamabooshis; and though well aware how useless it was in my case to
+seek efficient cure from any other "adept," my excellent old friend
+did everything he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was to
+no purpose, and the canker-worm of my life's despair could not be
+thoroughly extricated. I found from them that not one of these learned
+men could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of clairvoyant
+obsession. It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them to
+show futurity, or things that had already come to pass, who alone had
+full control over them. With kind sympathy, which I had now learned
+to appreciate, the holy men invited me to join the group of their
+disciples, and learn from them what I could do for myself. "Will alone,
+faith in your own soul powers, can help you now," they said. "But it
+may take several years to undo even a part of the great mischief;"
+they added. "A Daij-Dzin is easily dislodged in the beginning; if left
+alone, he takes possession of a man's nature, and it becomes almost
+impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim."
+
+Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do, I
+gratefully assented, doing my best to believe in all that these holy
+men believed in, and yet ever failing to do so in my heart. The demon
+of unbelief and all-denial seemed rooted in me more firmly even than
+the Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was not to
+lose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I proceeded without delay
+to free myself from the world and my commercial obligations, in order
+to live for several years an independent life. I settled my accounts
+with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm.
+Notwithstanding considerable financial losses resulting from such a
+precipitate liquidation, I found myself, after closing the accounts,
+a far richer man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no longer
+any attraction for me, now that I had no one to share it with, no one
+to work for. Life had become a burden; and such was my indifference to
+my future, that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew--in case
+he should return alive from his sea voyage--I should have neglected
+entirely even a small provision for myself, had not my native partner
+interfered and insisted upon my making it. I now recognized with
+Lao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,
+as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any tempest. Wealth
+is a weak anchor in days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatal
+counsellor. Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid aside
+for myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to assure me a small
+income for life, or if I ever left my new friends and instructors.
+Having settled my earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings at
+Kioto, I joined the "Masters of the Long Vision," who took me to their
+mysterious abode. There I remained for several years, studying very
+earnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing no one but a few of
+the members of our religious community.
+
+Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then, and
+many a secret folio from the library of Tzion-ene have I devoured,
+obtaining thereby mastery over several kinds of invisible beings
+of a lower order. But the great secret of power over the terrible
+Daij-Dzin I could not get. It remains in the possession of a very
+limited number of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the great
+majority of the Yamabooshis themselves being ignorant how to obtain
+such mastery over the dangerous Elemental. One who would reach such
+power of control would have to become entirely identified with the
+Yamabooshis, to accept their views and beliefs, and to attain the
+highest degree of Initiation. Very naturally, I was found unfit to
+join the Fraternity, owing to many insurmountable reasons besides my
+congenital and ineradicable scepticism, though I tried hard to believe.
+Thus, partially relieved of my affliction and taught how to conjure the
+unwelcome visions away, I still remained, and do remain to this day,
+helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now and then.
+
+It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted position
+of an independent Seer and Adept that I reluctantly gave up any further
+trial. Nothing had been heard of the holy man, the first innocent cause
+of my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who occasionally visited
+me in my retreat, either could not, or would not, inform me of the
+whereabouts of the Yamabooshi. When, therefore, I had to give up all
+hope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift, I resolved
+to return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the rest of my life.
+With this object in view, I purchased through my late partners the
+Swiss _ch�let_ in which my hapless sister and I were born, where I had
+grown up under her care, and selected it for my future hermitage.
+
+When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer which took me back
+to my fatherland, the good old Bonze tried to console me for my
+disappointments. "My son," he said, "regard all that happened to you
+as your _Karma_--a just retribution. No one who has subjected himself
+willingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin can ever hope to become a _Rahat_
+(an Adept), a high-soul�d Yamabooshi--unless immediately purified.
+At best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose and to
+successfully fight off the fiend. _Like a scar left after a poisonous
+wound, the trace of a Daij-Dzin can never be effaced from the Soul
+until purified by a new rebirth._ Withal, feel not dejected, but be of
+good cheer in your affliction, since it has led you to acquire true
+knowledge, and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise rejected
+with contempt. And of this priceless knowledge, acquired through
+suffering and personal efforts--no Daij-Dzin can ever deprive you.
+Fare thee well, then, and may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen of
+Heaven, afford you comfort and protection."
+
+We parted, and since then I have led the life of an anchorite, in
+constant solitude and study. Though still occasionally afflicted,
+I do not regret the years I have passed under the instruction of
+the Yamabooshis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received. Of
+the priest Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affection
+and respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day of his
+death; an event which, with all its to me painful details, I had the
+unthanked-for privilege of witnessing across the seas, at the very hour
+in which it occurred.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES
+
+A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY[2]
+
+      [2] This story is given from the narrative of an eye-witness,
+      a Russian gentleman, very pious, and fully trustworthy.
+      Moreover, the facts are copied from the police records of P----.
+      The eyewitness in question attributes it, of course, partly to
+      divine interference and partly to the Evil One.--H.�P.�B.
+
+
+In one of the distant governments of the Russian empire, in a small
+town on the borders of Siberia, a mysterious tragedy occurred more
+than thirty years ago. About six versts from the little town of P----,
+famous for the wild beauty of its scenery, and for the wealth of its
+inhabitants--generally proprietors of mines and of iron foundries--stood
+an aristocratic mansion. Its household consisted of the master, a rich
+old bachelor and his brother, who was a widower and the father of
+two sons and three daughters. It was known that the proprietor, Mr.
+Izvertzoff, had adopted his brother's children, and, having formed an
+especial attachment for his eldest nephew, Nicolas, he had made him the
+sole heir of his numerous estates.
+
+Time rolled on. The uncle was getting old, the nephew was coming of
+age. Days and years had passed in monotonous serenity, when, on the
+hitherto clear horizon of the quiet family, appeared a cloud. On an
+unlucky day one of the nieces took it into her head to study the
+zither. The instrument being of purely Teutonic origin, and no teacher
+of it residing in the neighborhood, the indulgent uncle sent to St.
+Petersburg for both. After diligent search only one Professor could be
+found willing to trust himself in such close proximity to Siberia. It
+was an old German artist, who, sharing his affections equally between
+his instrument and a pretty blonde daughter, would part with neither.
+And thus it came to pass that one fine morning the old Professor
+arrived at the mansion, with his music box under one arm and his fair
+Munchen leaning on the other.
+
+From that day the little cloud began growing rapidly; for every
+vibration of the melodious instrument found a responsive echo in the
+old bachelor's heart. Music awakens love, they say, and the work begun
+by the zither was completed by Munchen's blue eyes. At the expiration
+of six months the niece had become an expert zither player, and the
+uncle was desperately in love.
+
+One morning, gathering his adopted family around him, he embraced them
+all very tenderly, promised to remember them in his will, and wound up
+by declaring his unalterable resolution to marry the blue-eyed Munchen.
+After this he fell upon their necks and wept in silent rapture. The
+family, understanding that they were cheated out of the inheritance,
+also wept; but it was for another cause. Having thus wept, they
+consoled themselves and tried to rejoice, for the old gentleman was
+sincerely beloved by all. Not all of them rejoiced, though. Nicolas,
+who had himself been smitten to the heart by the pretty German, and
+who found himself defrauded at once of his belle and of his uncle's
+money, neither rejoiced nor consoled himself, but disappeared for a
+whole day.
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Izvertzoff had given orders to prepare his traveling
+carriage on the following day, and it was whispered that he was going
+to the chief town of the district, at some distance from his home,
+with the intention of altering his will. Though very wealthy, he had
+no superintendent on his estate, but kept his books himself. The same
+evening after supper, he was heard in his room, angrily scolding his
+servant, who had been in his service for over thirty years. This man,
+Ivan, was a native of northern Asia, from Kamschatka; he had been
+brought up by the family in the Christian religion, and was thought to
+be very much attached to his master. A few days later, when the first
+tragic circumstance I am about to relate had brought all the police
+force to the spot, it was remembered that on that night Ivan was drunk;
+that his master, who had a horror of this vice had paternally thrashed
+him, and turned him out of his room, and that Ivan had been seen
+reeling out of the door, and had been heard to mutter threats.
+
+On the vast domain of Mr. Izvertzoff there was a curious cavern, which
+excited the curiosity of all who visited it. It exists to this day, and
+is well known to every inhabitant of P----. A pine forest, commencing
+a few feet from the garden gate, climbs in steep terraces up a long
+range of rocky hills, which it covers with a broad belt of impenetrable
+vegetation. The grotto leading into the cavern, which is known as the
+"Cave of the Echoes," is situated about half a mile from the site
+of the mansion, from which it appears as a small excavation in the
+hill-side, almost hidden by luxuriant plants, but not so completely
+as to prevent any person entering it from being readily seen from the
+terrace in front of the house. Entering the Grotto, the explorer finds
+at the rear a narrow cleft; having passed through which he emerges into
+a lofty cavern, feebly lighted through fissures in the vaulted roof,
+fifty feet from the ground. The cavern itself is immense, and would
+easily hold between two and three thousand people. A part of it, in the
+days of Mr. Izvertzoff, was paved with flagstones, and was often used
+in the summer as a ball-room by picnic parties. Of an irregular oval,
+it gradually narrows into a broad corridor, which runs for several
+miles underground, opening here and there into other chambers, as large
+and lofty as the ball-room, but, unlike this, impassable otherwise than
+in a boat, as they are always full of water. These natural basins have
+the reputation of being unfathomable.
+
+On the margin of the first of these is a small platform, with several
+mossy rustic seats arranged on it, and it is from this spot that the
+phenomenal echoes, which give the cavern its name, are heard in all
+their weirdness. A word pronounced in a whisper, or even a sigh, is
+caught up by endless mocking voices, and instead of diminishing in
+volume, as honest echoes do, the sound grows louder and louder at
+every successive repetition, until at last it bursts forth like the
+repercussion of a pistol shot, and recedes in a plaintive wail down the
+corridor.
+
+On the day in question, Mr. Izvertzoff had mentioned his intention of
+having a dancing party in this cave on his wedding day, which he had
+fixed for an early date. On the following morning, while preparing for
+his drive, he was seen by his family entering the grotto, accompanied
+only by his Siberian servant. Half-an-hour later, Ivan returned to the
+mansion for a snuff-box, which his master had forgotten in his room,
+and went back with it to the cave. An hour later the whole house was
+startled by his loud cries. Pale and dripping with water, Ivan rushed
+in like a madman, and declared that Mr. Izvertzoff was nowhere to be
+found in the cave. Thinking he had fallen into the lake, he had dived
+into the first basin in search of him and was nearly drowned himself.
+
+The day passed in vain attempts to find the body. The police filled the
+house, and louder than the rest in his despair was Nicolas, the nephew,
+who had returned home only to meet the sad tidings.
+
+A dark suspicion fell upon Ivan, the Siberian. He had been struck by
+his master the night before, and had been heard to swear revenge. He
+had accompanied him alone to the cave, and when his room was searched,
+a box full of rich family jewelry, known to have been carefully kept
+in Mr. Izvertzoff's apartment, was found under Ivan's bedding. Vainly
+did the serf call God to witness that the box had been given to him
+in charge by his master himself, just before they proceeded to the
+cave; that it was the latter's purpose to have the jewelry reset, as
+he intended it for a wedding present to his bride; and that he, Ivan,
+would willingly give his own life to recall that of his master, if
+he knew him to be dead. No heed was paid to him, however, and he was
+arrested and thrown into prison upon a charge of murder. There he was
+left, for under the Russian law a criminal cannot--at any rate, he could
+not in those days--be sentenced for a crime, however conclusive the
+circumstantial evidence, unless he confessed his guilt.
+
+After a week had passed in useless search, the family arrayed
+themselves in deep mourning; and, as the will as originally drawn
+remained without a codicil, the whole of the property passed into the
+hands of the nephew. The old teacher and his daughter bore this sudden
+reverse of fortune with true Germanic phlegm, and prepared to depart.
+Taking again his zither under one arm, the old man was about to lead
+away his Munchen by the other, when the nephew stopped him by offering
+himself as the fair damsel's husband in the place of his departed
+uncle. The change was found to be an agreeable one, and, without much
+ado, the young people were married.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten years rolled away, and we meet the happy family once more at the
+beginning of 1859. The fair Munchen had grown fat and vulgar. From
+the day of the old man's disappearance, Nicolas had become morose and
+retired in his habits, and many wondered at the change in him, for now
+he was never seen to smile. It seemed as if his only aim in life were
+to find out his uncle's murderer, or rather to bring Ivan to confess
+his guilt. But the man still persisted that he was innocent.
+
+An only son had been born to the young couple, and a strange child
+it was. Small, delicate, and ever ailing, his frail life seemed to
+hang by a thread. When his features were in repose, his resemblance
+to his uncle was so striking that the members of the family often
+shrank from him in terror. It was the pale shriveled face of a man
+of sixty upon the shoulders of a child nine years old. He was never
+seen either to laugh or to play, but, perched in his high chair, would
+gravely sit there, folding his arms in a way peculiar to the late Mr.
+Izvertzoff; and thus he would remain for hours, drowsy and motionless.
+His nurses were often seen furtively crossing themselves at night, upon
+approaching him, and not one of them would consent to sleep alone with
+him in the nursery. His father's behavior towards him was still more
+strange. He seemed to love him passionately, and at the same time to
+hate him bitterly. He seldom embraced or caressed the child, but, with
+livid cheek and staring eye, he would pass long hours watching him, as
+the child sat quietly in his corner, in his goblin-like, old-fashioned
+way.
+
+The child had never left the estate, and few outside the family knew of
+his existence.
+
+About the middle of July, a tall Hungarian traveler, preceded by a
+great reputation for eccentricity, wealth and mysterious powers,
+arrived at the town of P---- from the North, where, it was said, he had
+resided for many years. He settled in the little town, in company
+with a Shaman or South Siberian magician, on whom he was said to make
+mesmeric experiments. He gave dinners and parties, and invariably
+exhibited his Shaman, of whom he felt very proud, for the amusement of
+his guests. One day the notables of P---- made an unexpected invasion of
+the domains of Nicolas Izvertzoff, and requested the loan of his cave
+for an evening entertainment. Nicolas consented with great reluctance,
+and only after still greater hesitancy was he prevailed upon to join
+the party.
+
+The first cavern and the platform beside the bottomless lake glittered
+with lights. Hundreds of flickering candles and torches, stuck in
+the clefts of the rocks, illuminated the place and drove the shadows
+from the mossy nooks and corners, where they had crouched undisturbed
+for many years. The stalactites on the walls sparkled brightly, and
+the sleeping echoes were suddenly awakened by a joyous confusion of
+laughter and conversation. The Shaman, who was never lost sight of by
+his friend and patron, sat in a corner, entranced as usual. Crouched
+on a projecting rock, about midway between the entrance and the water,
+with his lemon-yellow, wrinkled face, flat nose, and thin beard, he
+looked more like an ugly stone idol than a human being. Many of the
+company pressed around him and received correct answers to their
+questions, the Hungarian cheerfully submitting his mesmerized "subject"
+to cross-examination.
+
+Suddenly one of the party, a lady, remarked that it was in that very
+cave that old Mr. Izvertzoff had so unaccountably disappeared ten years
+before. The foreigner appeared interested, and desired to learn more of
+the circumstances, so Nicolas was sought amid the crowd and led before
+the eager group. He was the host and he found it impossible to refuse
+the demanded narrative. He repeated the sad tale in a trembling voice,
+with a pallid cheek, and tears were seen glittering in his feverish
+eyes. The company were greatly affected, and encomiums upon the
+behavior of the loving nephew in honoring the memory of his uncle and
+benefactor were freely circulating in whispers, when suddenly the voice
+of Nicolas became choked, his eyes started from their sockets, and with
+a suppressed groan, he staggered back. Every eye in the crowd followed
+with curiosity his haggard look, as it fell and remained riveted upon a
+weazened little face, that peeped from behind the back of the Hungarian.
+
+"Where do you come from? Who brought you here, child?" gasped out
+Nicolas, as pale as death.
+
+"I was in bed, papa; this man came to me, and brought me here in his
+arms," answered the boy simply, pointing to the Shaman, beside whom
+he stood upon the rock, and who, with his eyes closed, kept swaying
+himself to and fro like a living pendulum.
+
+"That is very strange," remarked one of the guests, "for the man has
+never moved from his place."
+
+"Good God! what an extraordinary resemblance!" muttered an old resident
+of the town, a friend of the lost man.
+
+"You lie, child!" fiercely exclaimed the father. "Go to bed; this is no
+place for you."
+
+"Come, come," interposed the Hungarian, with a strange expression on
+his face, and encircling with his arm the slender childish figure; "the
+little fellow has seen the double of my Shaman, which roams sometimes
+far away from his body, and has mistaken the phantom for the man
+himself. Let him remain with us for a while."
+
+At these strange words the guests stared at each other in mute
+surprise, while some piously made the sign of the cross, spitting
+aside, presumably at the devil and all his works.
+
+"By-the-bye," continued the Hungarian with a peculiar firmness of
+accent, and addressing the company rather than any one in particular;
+"why should we not try, with the help of my Shaman, to unravel the
+mystery hanging over the tragedy? Is the suspected party still lying
+in prison? What? he has not confessed up to now? This is surely very
+strange. But now we will learn the truth in a few minutes! Let all keep
+silent!"
+
+He then approached the Tehuktchene, and immediately began his
+performance without so much as asking the consent of the master of
+the place. The latter stood rooted to the spot, as if petrified with
+horror, and unable to articulate a word. The suggestion met with
+general approbation, save from him; and the police inspector, Col. S----,
+especially approved of the idea.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said the mesmerizer in soft tones, "allow
+me for this once to proceed otherwise than in my general fashion. I
+will employ the method of native magic. It is more appropriate to this
+wild place, and far more effective as you will find, than our European
+method of mesmerization."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, he drew from a bag that never left his
+person, first a small drum, and then two little phials--one full of
+fluid, the other empty. With the contents of the former he sprinkled
+the Shaman, who fell to trembling and nodding more violently than ever.
+The air was filled with the perfume of spicy odors, and the atmosphere
+itself seemed to become clearer. Then, to the horror of those present,
+he approached the Tibetan, and taking a miniature stiletto from his
+pocket, he plunged the sharp steel into the man's forearm, and drew
+blood from it, which he caught in the empty phial. When it was half
+filled, he pressed the orifice of the wound with his thumb, and stopped
+the flow of blood as easily as if he had corked a bottle, after which
+he sprinkled the blood over the little boy's head. He then suspended
+the drum from his neck, and, with two ivory drum-sticks, which were
+covered with magic signs and letters, he began beating a sort of
+_r�veille_, to drum up the spirits, as he said.
+
+The bystanders, half-shocked and half-terrified by these extraordinary
+proceedings, eagerly crowded round him, and for a few moments a dead
+silence reigned throughout the lofty cavern. Nicolas, with his face
+livid and corpse-like, stood speechless as before. The mesmerizer had
+placed himself between the Shaman and the platform, when he began
+slowly drumming. The first notes were muffled, and vibrated so softly
+in the air that they awakened no echo, but the Shaman quickened his
+pendulum-like motion and the child became restless. The drummer then
+began a slow chant, low, impressive and solemn.
+
+As the unknown words issued from his lips, the flames of the candles
+and torches wavered and flickered, until they began dancing in rhythm
+with the chant. A cold wind came wheezing from the dark corridors
+beyond the water, leaving a plaintive echo in its trail. Then a sort
+of nebulous vapor, seeming to ooze from the rocky ground and walls,
+gathered about the Shaman and the boy. Around the latter the aura was
+silvery and transparent, but the cloud which enveloped the former was
+red and sinister. Approaching nearer to the platform the magician beat
+a louder roll upon the drum, and this time the echo caught it up with
+terrific effect! It reverberated near and far in incessant peals; one
+wail followed another, louder and louder, until the thundering roar
+seemed the chorus of a thousand demon voices rising from the fathomless
+depths of the lake. The water itself, whose surface, illuminated by
+many lights, had previously been smooth as a sheet of glass, became
+suddenly agitated, as if a powerful gust of wind had swept over its
+unruffled face.
+
+Another chant, and a roll of the drum, and the mountain trembled to its
+foundation with the cannon-like peals which rolled through the dark
+and distant corridors. The Shaman's body rose two yards in the air,
+and nodding and swaying, sat, self-suspended like an apparition. But
+the transformation which now occurred in the boy chilled everyone, as
+they speechlessly watched the scene. The silvery cloud about the boy
+now seemed to lift him, too, into the air; but, unlike the Shaman, his
+feet never left the ground. The child began to grow, as though the work
+of years was miraculously accomplished in a few seconds. He became
+tall and large, and his senile features grew older with the ageing
+of his body. A few more seconds, and the youthful form had entirely
+disappeared. It was totally absorbed in another individuality, and to
+the horror of those present who had been familiar with his appearance,
+this individuality was that of old Mr. Izvertzoff, and on his temple
+was a large gaping wound, from which trickled great drops of blood.
+
+This phantom moved towards Nicolas, till it stood directly in front
+of him, while he, with his hair standing erect, with the look of a
+madman gazed at his own son, transformed into his uncle. The sepulchral
+silence was broken by the Hungarian, who, addressing the child phantom,
+asked him in solemn voice:
+
+"In the name of the great Master, of him who has all power, answer the
+truth, and nothing but the truth. Restless spirit, hast thou been lost
+by accident, or foully murdered?"
+
+The specter's lips moved, but it was the echo which answered for them
+in lugubrious shouts: "Murdered! murdered!! mur-der-ed!!!"
+
+"Where? How? By whom?" asked the conjuror.
+
+The apparition pointed a finger at Nicolas and, without removing its
+gaze or lowering its arm, retreated backwards slowly towards the lake.
+At every step it took, the younger Izvertzoff, as if compelled by some
+irresistible fascination, advanced a step towards it, until the phantom
+reached the lake, and the next moment was seen gliding on its surface.
+It was a fearful, ghostly scene!
+
+When he had come within two steps of the brink of the watery abyss, a
+violent convulsion ran through the frame of the guilty man. Flinging
+himself upon his knees, he clung to one of the rustic seats with a
+desperate clutch, and staring wildly, uttered a long piercing cry of
+agony. The phantom now remained motionless on the water, and bending
+its extended finger, slowly beckoned him to come. Crouched in abject
+terror, the wretched man shrieked until the cavern rang again and
+again: "I did not.... No, I did not murder you!"
+
+Then came a splash, and now it was the boy who was in the dark water,
+struggling for his life, in the middle of the lake, with the same
+motionless stern apparition brooding over him.
+
+"Papa! papa! Save me.... I am drowning!" ... cried a piteous little
+voice amid the uproar of the mocking echoes.
+
+"My boy!" shrieked Nicolas, in the accents of a maniac, springing to
+his feet. "My boy! Save him! Oh, save him!... Yes, I confess.... I am
+the murderer.... It is I who killed him!"
+
+Another splash, and the phantom disappeared. With a cry of horror the
+company rushed towards the platform; but their feet were suddenly
+rooted to the ground, as they saw amid the swirling eddies a whitish
+shapeless mass holding the murderer and the boy in tight embrace, and
+slowly sinking into the bottomless lake.
+
+On the morning after these occurrences, when, after a sleepless night,
+some of the party visited the residence of the Hungarian gentleman,
+they found it closed and deserted. He and the Shaman had disappeared.
+Many are among the old inhabitants of P---- who remember him; the Police
+Inspector, Col. S----, dying a few years ago in the full assurance that
+the noble traveler was the devil. To add to the general consternation
+the Izvertzoff mansion took fire on that same night and was completely
+destroyed. The Archbishop performed the ceremony of exorcism, but
+the locality is considered accursed to this day. The Government
+investigated the facts, and--ordered silence.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUMINOUS SHIELD
+
+
+We were a small and select party of light-hearted travelers. We had
+arrived at Constantinople a week before from Greece, and had devoted
+fourteen hours a day ever since to toiling up and down the steep
+heights of Pera, visiting bazaars, climbing to the tops of minarets and
+fighting our way through armies of hungry dogs, the traditional masters
+of the streets of Stamboul. Nomadic life is infectious, they say, and
+no civilization is strong enough to destroy the charm of unrestrained
+freedom when it has once been tasted. The gipsy cannot be tempted
+from his tent, and even the common tramp finds a fascination in his
+comfortless and precarious existence, that prevents him taking to any
+fixed abode and occupation. To guard my spaniel Ralph from falling a
+victim to this infection, and joining the canine Bedouins that infested
+the streets, was my chief care during our stay in Constantinople. He
+was a fine fellow, my constant companion and cherished friend. Afraid
+of losing him, I kept a strict watch over his movements; for the
+first three days, however, he behaved like a tolerably well-educated
+quadruped, and remained faithfully at my heels. At every impudent
+attack from his Mahomedan cousins, whether intended as a hostile
+demonstration or an overture of friendship, his only reply would be to
+draw in his tail between his legs, and with an air of dignified modesty
+seek protection under the wing of one or other of our party.
+
+As he had thus from the first shown so decided an aversion to bad
+company, I began to feel assured of his discretion, and by the end
+of the third day I had considerably relaxed my vigilance. This
+carelessness on my part, however, was soon punished, and I was made to
+regret my misplaced confidence. In an unguarded moment he listened to
+the voice of some four-footed syren, and the last I saw of him was the
+end of his bushy tail, vanishing round the corner of a dirty, winding
+little back street.
+
+Greatly annoyed, I passed the remainder of the day in a vain search
+after my dumb companion. I offered twenty, thirty, forty francs reward
+for him. About as many vagabond Maltese began a regular chase, and
+towards evening we were invaded in our hotel by the whole troop, every
+man of them with a more or less mangy cur in his arms, which he tried
+to persuade me was my lost dog. The more I denied, the more solemnly
+they insisted, one of them actually going down on his knees, snatching
+from his bosom an old corroded metal image of the Virgin, and swearing
+a solemn oath that the Queen of Heaven herself had kindly appeared to
+him to point out the right animal. The tumult had increased to such
+an extent that it looked as if Ralph's disappearance was going to be
+the cause of a small riot, and finally our landlord had to send for
+a couple of Kavasses from the nearest police station, and have this
+regiment of bipeds and quadrupeds expelled by main force. I began to
+be convinced that I should never see my dog again, and I was the
+more despondent since the porter of the hotel, a semi-respectable
+old brigand, who, to judge by appearances, had not passed more than
+half-a-dozen years at the galleys, gravely assured me that all my pains
+were useless, as my spaniel was undoubtedly dead and devoured too by
+this time, the Turkish dogs being very fond of their more toothsome
+English brothers.
+
+All this discussion had taken place in the street at the door of the
+hotel, and I was about to give up the search for that night at least,
+and enter the hotel, when an old Greek lady, a Phanariote who had been
+hearing the fracas from the steps of a door close by, approached our
+disconsolate group and suggested to Miss H----, one of our party, that we
+should inquire of the dervishes concerning the fate of Ralph.
+
+"And what can the dervishes know about my dog?" said I, in no mood to
+joke, ridiculous as the proposition appeared.
+
+"The holy men know all, Kyrea (Madam)," said she, somewhat
+mysteriously. "Last week I was robbed of my new satin pelisse, that
+my son had just brought me from Broussa, and, as you all see, I have
+recovered it and have it on my back now."
+
+"Indeed? Then the holy men have also managed to metamorphose your new
+pelisse into an old one by all appearances," said one of the gentlemen
+who accompanied us, pointing as he spoke to a large rent in the back,
+which had been clumsily repaired with pins.
+
+"And that is just the most wonderful part of the whole story," quietly
+answered the Phanariote, not in the least disconcerted. "They showed me
+in the shining circle the quarter of the town, the house, and even the
+room in which the Jew who had stolen my pelisse was just about to rip
+it up and cut it into pieces. My son and I had barely time to run over
+to the Kalindjikoulosek quarter, and to save my property. We caught the
+thief in the very act, and we both recognized him as the man shown to
+us by the dervishes in the magic moon. He confessed the theft and is
+now in prison."
+
+Although none of us had the least comprehension of what she meant
+by the magic moon and the shining circle, and were all thoroughly
+mystified by her account of the divining powers of the "holy men," we
+still felt somehow satisfied from her manner that the story was not
+altogether a fabrication, and since she had at all events apparently
+succeeded in recovering her property through being somehow assisted by
+the dervishes, we determined to go the following morning and see for
+ourselves, for what had helped her might help us likewise.
+
+The monotonous cry of the Muezzins from the tops of the minarets had
+just proclaimed the hour of noon as we, descending from the heights
+of Pera to the port of Galata, with difficulty managed to elbow our
+way through the unsavory crowds of the commercial quarter of the town.
+Before we reached the docks we had been half deafened by the shouts and
+incessant ear-piercing cries and the Babel-like confusion of tongues.
+In this part of the city it is useless to expect to be guided by either
+house numbers, or names of streets. The location of any desired place
+is indicated by its proximity to some other more conspicuous building,
+such as a mosque, bath or European shop; for the rest, one has to trust
+to Allah and his prophet.
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that we finally
+discovered the British ship-chandler's store, at the rear of which
+we were to find the place of our destination. Our hotel guide was as
+ignorant of the dervishes' abode as we were ourselves; but at last a
+small Greek, in all the simplicity of primitive undress, consented for
+a modest copper backsheesh to lead us to the dancers.
+
+When we arrived we were shown into a vast and gloomy hall that looked
+like a deserted stable. It was long and narrow, the floor was thickly
+strewn with sand as in a riding school, and it was lighted only by
+small windows placed at some height from the ground. The dervishes had
+finished their morning performances, and were evidently resting from
+their exhausting labors. They looked completely prostrated, some lying
+about in corners, others sitting on their heels staring vacantly into
+space, engaged, as we were informed, in meditation on their invisible
+deity. They appeared to have lost all power of sight and hearing, for
+none of them responded to our questions until a great gaunt figure,
+wearing a tall cap that made him look at least seven feet high, emerged
+from an obscure corner. Informing us that he was their chief, the giant
+gave us to understand that the saintly brethren, being in the habit of
+receiving orders for additional ceremonies from Allah himself, must
+on no account be disturbed. But when our interpreter had explained to
+him the object of our visit, which concerned himself alone, as he was
+the sole custodian of the "divining rod," his objections vanished and
+he extended his hand for alms. Upon being gratified, he intimated that
+only two of our party could be admitted at one time into the confidence
+of the future, and led the way, followed by Miss H---- and myself.
+
+Plunging after him into what seemed to be a half subterranean passage,
+we were led to the foot of a tall ladder leading to a chamber under
+the roof. We scrambled up after our guide, and at the top we found
+ourselves in a wretched garret of moderate size, with bare walls and
+destitute of furniture. The floor was carpeted with a thick layer of
+dust, and cobwebs festooned the walls in neglected confusion. In the
+corner we saw something that I at first mistook for a bundle of old
+rags; but the heap presently moved and got on its legs, advanced to the
+middle of the room and stood before us, the most extraordinary looking
+creature that I ever beheld. Its sex was female, but whether she was a
+woman or child it was impossible to decide. She was a hideous-looking
+dwarf, with an enormous head, the shoulders of a grenadier, with
+a waist in proportion; the whole supported by two short, lean,
+spider-like legs that seemed unequal to the task of bearing the weight
+of the monstrous body. She had a grinning countenance like the face of
+a satyr, and it was ornamented with letters and signs from the Koran
+painted in bright yellow. On her forehead was a blood-red crescent;
+her head was crowned with a dusty tarbouche, or fez; her legs were
+arrayed in large Turkish trousers, and some dirty white muslin wrapped
+round her body barely sufficed to conceal its hideous deformities. This
+creature rather let herself drop than sat down in the middle of the
+floor, and as her weight descended on the rickety boards it sent up a
+cloud of dust that set us coughing and sneezing. This was the famous
+Tatmos known as the Damascus oracle!
+
+Without losing time in idle talk, the dervish produced a piece of
+chalk, and traced around the girl a circle about six feet in diameter.
+Fetching from behind the door twelve small copper lamps which he filled
+with some dark liquid from a small bottle which he drew from his bosom,
+he placed them symmetrically around the magic circle. He then broke a
+chip of wood from a panel of the half ruined door, which bore the marks
+of many a similar depredation, and, holding the chip between his thumb
+and finger he began blowing on it at regular intervals, alternating
+the blowing with mutterings of some kind of weird incantation, till
+suddenly, and without any apparent cause for its ignition, there
+appeared a spark on the chip and it blazed up like a dry match. The
+dervish then lit the twelve lamps at this self-generated flame.
+
+During this process, Tatmos, who had sat till then altogether
+unconcerned and motionless, removed her yellow slippers from her naked
+feet, and throwing them into a corner, disclosed as an additional
+beauty, a sixth toe on each deformed foot. The dervish now reached over
+into the circle and seizing the dwarf's ankles gave her a jerk, as if
+he had been lifting a bag of corn, and raised her clear off the ground,
+then, stepping back a pace, held her head downward. He shook her as
+one might a sack to pack its contents, the motion being regular and
+easy. He then swung her to and fro like a pendulum until the necessary
+momentum was acquired, when letting go one foot, and seizing the other
+with both hands, he made a powerful muscular effort and whirled her
+round in the air as if she had been an Indian club.
+
+My companion had shrunk back in alarm to the farthest corner. Round
+and round the dervish swung his living burden, she remaining perfectly
+passive. The motion increased in rapidity until the eye could hardly
+follow the body in its circuit. This continued for perhaps two or three
+minutes, until, gradually slackening the motion, he at length stopped
+it altogether, and in an instant had landed the girl on her knees
+in the middle of the lamp-lit circle. Such was the Eastern mode of
+mesmerization as practised among the dervishes.
+
+And now the dwarf seemed entirely oblivious of external objects and in
+a deep trance. Her head and jaw dropped on her chest, her eyes were
+glazed and staring, and altogether her appearance was even more hideous
+than before. The dervish then carefully closed the shutters of the only
+window, and we should have been in total obscurity, but that there was
+a hole bored in it, through which entered a bright ray of sunlight that
+shot through the darkened room and shone upon the girl. He arranged her
+drooping head so that the ray should fall upon the crown, after which
+motioning us to remain silent, he folded his arms upon his bosom, and,
+fixing his gaze upon the bright spot, became as motionless as a stone
+image. I, too, riveted my eyes on the same spot, wondering what was to
+happen next, and how all this strange ceremony was to help me to find
+Ralph.
+
+By degrees, the bright patch, as if it had drawn through the sunbeam
+a greater splendor from without and condensed it within its own
+area, shaped itself into a brilliant star, sending out rays in every
+direction as from a focus.
+
+A curious optical effect then occurred: the room, which had been
+previously partially lighted by the sunbeam, grew darker and darker as
+the star increased in radiance, until we found ourselves in an Egyptian
+gloom. The star twinkled, trembled and turned, at first with a slow
+gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its circumference
+at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disk, and we no longer
+saw the dwarf, who seemed absorbed into its light. Having gradually
+attained an extremely rapid velocity, as the girl had done when whirled
+by the dervish, the motion began to decrease and finally merged into
+a feeble vibration, like the shimmer of moonbeams on rippling water.
+Then it flickered for a moment longer, emitted a few last flashes, and
+assuming the density and iridescence of an immense opal, it remained
+motionless. The disk now radiated a moon-like luster, soft and silvery,
+but instead of illuminating the garret, it seemed only to intensify
+the darkness. The edge of the circle was not penumbrous, but on the
+contrary sharply defined like that of a silver shield.
+
+All being now ready, the dervish without uttering a word, or removing
+his gaze from the disk, stretched out a hand, and taking hold of mine,
+he drew me to his side and pointed to the luminous shield. Looking at
+the place indicated, we saw large patches appear like those on the
+moon. These gradually formed themselves into figures that began moving
+about in high relief in their natural colors. They neither appeared
+like a photograph nor an engraving; still less like the reflection of
+images on a mirror, but as if the disk were a cameo, and they were
+raised above its surface and then endowed with life and motion. To my
+astonishment and my friend's consternation, we recognized the bridge
+leading from Galata to Stamboul spanning the Golden Horn from the new
+to the old city. There were the people hurrying to and fro, steamers
+and gay caiques gliding on the blue Bosphorus, the many colored
+buildings, villas and palaces reflected in the water; and the whole
+picture illuminated by the noon-day sun. It passed like a panorama,
+but so vivid was the impression that we could not tell whether it or
+ourselves were in motion. All was bustle and life, but not a sound
+broke the oppressive stillness. It was noiseless as a dream. It was
+a phantom picture. Street after street and quarter after quarter
+succeeded one another; there was the bazaar, with its narrow, roofed
+passages, the small shops on either side, the coffee houses with
+gravely smoking Turks; and as either they glided past us or we past
+them, one of the smokers upset the narghil� and coffee of another,
+and a volley of soundless invectives caused us great amusement. So
+we traveled with the picture until we came to a large building that I
+recognized as the palace of the Minister of Finance. In a ditch behind
+the house, and close to a mosque, lying in a pool of mud with his
+silken coat all bedraggled, lay my poor Ralph! Panting and crouching
+down as if exhausted, he seemed to be in a dying condition; and near
+him were gathered some sorry-looking curs who lay blinking in the sun
+and snapping at the flies!
+
+I had seen all that I desired, although I had not breathed a word about
+the dog to the dervish, and had come more out of curiosity than with
+the idea of any success. I was impatient to leave at once and recover
+Ralph, but as my companion besought me to remain a little while longer,
+I reluctantly consented. The scene faded away and Miss H---- placed
+herself in turn by the side of the dervish.
+
+"I will think of _him_," she whispered in my ear with the eager tone
+that young ladies generally assume when talking of the worshipped _him_.
+
+There is a long stretch of sand and a blue sea with white waves dancing
+in the sun, and a great steamer is ploughing her way along past a
+desolate shore, leaving a milky track behind her. The deck is full
+of life, the men are busy forward, the cook with white cap and apron
+is coming out of the galley, uniformed officers are moving about,
+passengers fill the quarter-deck, lounging, flirting or reading, and a
+young man we both recognize comes forward and leans over the taffrail.
+It is--_him_.
+
+Miss H---- gives a little gasp, blushes and smiles, and concentrates her
+thoughts again. The picture of the steamer vanishes; the magic moon
+remains for a few moments blank. But new spots appear on its luminous
+face, we see a library slowly emerging from its depths--a library with
+green carpet and hangings, and book-shelves round the sides of the
+room. Seated in an arm-chair at a table under a hanging lamp, is an old
+gentleman writing. His gray hair is brushed back from his forehead,
+his face is smooth-shaven and his countenance has an expression of
+benignity.
+
+The dervish made an hasty motion to enjoin silence; the light on the
+disk quivers, but resumes its steady brilliancy, and again its surface
+is imageless for a second.
+
+We are back in Constantinople now and out of the pearly depths of the
+shield forms our own apartment in the hotel. There are our papers and
+books on the bureau, my friend's traveling hat in a corner, her ribbons
+hanging on the glass, and lying on the bed the very dress she had
+changed when starting out on our expedition. No detail was lacking to
+make the identification complete; and as if to prove that we were not
+seeing something conjured up in our own imagination, there lay upon
+the dressing-table two unopened letters, the handwriting on which was
+clearly recognized by my friend. They were from a very dear relative
+of hers, from whom she had expected to hear when in Athens, but had
+been disappointed. The scene faded away and we now saw her brother's
+room with himself lying upon the lounge, and a servant bathing his
+head, whence, to our horror, blood was trickling. We had left the boy
+in perfect health but an hour before; and upon seeing this picture my
+companion uttered a cry of alarm, and seizing me by the hand dragged
+me to the door. We rejoined our guide and friends in the long hall and
+hurried back to the hotel.
+
+Young H---- had fallen downstairs and cut his forehead rather badly;
+in our room, on the dressing-table were the two letters which had
+arrived in our absence. They had been forwarded from Athens. Ordering
+a carriage, I at once drove to the Ministry of Finance, and alighting
+with the guide, hurriedly made for the ditch I had seen for the first
+time in the shining disk! In the middle of the pool, badly mangled,
+half-famished, but still alive, lay my beautiful spaniel Ralph, and
+near him were the blinking curs, unconcernedly snapping at the flies.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE POLAR LANDS
+
+(A Christmas Story)
+
+
+Just a year ago, during the Christmas holidays, a numerous society had
+gathered in the country house, or rather the old hereditary castle,
+of a wealthy landowner in Finland. Many were the remains in it of our
+forefathers' hospitable way of living; and many the medieval customs
+preserved, founded on traditions and superstitions, semi-Finnish and
+semi-Russian, the latter imported into it by its female proprietors
+from the shores of the Neva. Christmas trees were being prepared and
+implements for divination were being made ready. For, in that old
+castle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous ancestors and
+knights and ladies, old deserted turrets, with bastions and Gothic
+windows; mysterious somber alleys, and dark and endless cellars, easily
+transformed into subterranean passages and caves, ghostly prison cells,
+haunted by the restless phantoms of the heroes of local legends. In
+short, the old Manor offered every commodity for romantic horrors. But
+alas! this once they serve for nought; in the present narrative these
+dear old horrors play no such part as they otherwise might.
+
+Its chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man--let us call him
+Erkler. Yes; Dr. Erkler, professor of medicine, half-German through
+his father, a full-blown Russian on his mother's side and by education;
+and one who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.
+Nevertheless, very extraordinary things happened with him.
+
+Erkler, as it turned out was a great traveler, who by his own choice
+had accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his journeys round
+the world. More than once they had both seen death face to face from
+sunstrokes under the Tropics, from cold in the Polar Regions. All this
+notwithstanding, the doctor spoke with a never-abating enthusiasm
+about their "winterings" in Greenland and Novaya Zemla, and about the
+desert plains in Australia, where he lunched off a kangaroo and dined
+off an emu, and almost perished of thirst during the passage through a
+waterless track, which it took them forty hours to cross.
+
+"Yes," he used to remark, "I have experienced almost everything, save
+what you would describe as _supernatural_.... This, of course if we
+throw out of account a certain extraordinary event in my life--a man
+I met, of whom I will tell you just now--and its ... indeed, rather
+strange, I may add quite _inexplicable_, results."
+
+There was a loud demand that he should explain himself; and the doctor,
+forced to yield, began his narrative.
+
+"In 1878 we were compelled to winter on the north-western coast of
+Spitsbergen. We had been attempting to find our way during the short
+summer to the pole; but, as usual, the attempt had proved a failure,
+owing to the icebergs, and, after several such fruitless endeavors,
+we had to give it up. No sooner had we settled than the polar night
+descended upon us, our steamers got wedged in and frozen between the
+blocks of ice in the Gulf of Mussel, and we found ourselves cut off
+for eight long months from the rest of the living world.... I confess
+I, for one, felt it terribly at first. We became especially discouraged
+when one stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of materials
+prepared for our winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deer
+from our herd. Starvation in prospect is no incentive to good humor;
+and with the deer we had lost the best _plat de r�sistance_ against
+polar frosts, human organisms demanding in that climate an increase
+of heating and solid food. However, we were finally reconciled to
+our loss, and even got accustomed to the local and in reality more
+nutritious food--seals, and seal-grease. Our men from the remnants of
+our lumber built a house neatly divided into two compartments, one for
+our three professors and myself, and the other for themselves; and, a
+few wooden sheds being constructed for meteorological, astronomical
+and magnetic purposes, we even added a protecting stable for the few
+remaining deer. And then began the monotonous series of dawnless nights
+and days, hardly distinguishable one from the other, except through
+dark-gray shadows. At times, the "blues" we got into were fearful! We
+had contemplated sending two of our three steamers home in September,
+but the premature and unforeseen formation of ice walls round them had
+thwarted our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands, we had
+to economize still more with our meager provisions, fuel and light.
+Lamps were used only for scientific purposes: the rest of the time
+we had to content ourselves with God's light--the moon and the Aurora
+Borealis.... But how describe these glorious, incomparable northern
+lights! Rings, arrows, gigantic conflagrations of accurately divided
+rays of the most vivid and varied colors. The November moonlight
+nights were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow and the
+frozen rocks was most striking. These were fairy nights.
+
+"Well, one such night--it may have been one such _day_, for all I know,
+as from the end of November to about the middle of March we had no
+twilights at all, to distinguish the one from the other--we suddenly
+espied in the play of colored beams, which were then throwing a golden
+rosy hue on the snow plains, a dark moving spot.... It grew, and seemed
+to scatter as it approached nearer to us. What did this mean?... It
+looked like a herd of cattle, or a group of living men, trotting over
+the snowy wilderness.... But animals there were white like everything
+else. What then was this?... human beings?...
+
+"We could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men was approaching
+our dwelling. It turned out to be about fifty seal-hunters, guided by
+Matiliss, a well-known veteran mariner, from Norway. They had been
+caught by the icebergs, just as we had been.
+
+"'How did you know that we were here?' we asked.
+
+"'Old Johan, this very same old party, showed us the way'--they
+answered, pointing to a venerable-looking old man with snow-white locks.
+
+"In sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide far better to have
+sat at home over his fire than to have been seal-hunting in polar lands
+with younger men. And we told them so, still wondering how he came to
+learn of our presence in this kingdom of white bears. At this Matiliss
+and his companions smiled, assuring us that 'old Johan' _knew all_.
+They remarked that we must be novices in polar borderlands, since we
+were ignorant of Johan's personality and could still wonder at anything
+said of him.
+
+"'It is nigh forty-five years,' said the chief hunter, 'that I have
+been catching seals in the Polar Seas, and as far as my personal
+remembrance goes, I have always known him, and just as he is now, an
+old, white-bearded man. And so far back as in the days when I used to
+go to sea, as a small boy with my father, my dad used to tell me the
+same of old Johan, and he added that his own father and grandfather
+too, had known Johan in their days of boyhood, none of them having ever
+seen him otherwise than white as our snows. And, as our forefathers
+nicknamed him "the white-haired all-knower," thus do we, the seal
+hunters, call him, to this day.'
+
+"'Would you make us believe he is two hundred years old?'--we laughed.
+
+"Some of our sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon, plied
+him with questions.
+
+"'Grandfather! answer us, how old are you?'
+
+"'I really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as long as God has
+decreed me to. As to my years, I never counted them.'
+
+"'And how did you know, grandfather, that we were wintering in this
+place?'
+
+"'God guided me. How I learned it I do not know; save that I knew--I
+knew it.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE ENSOULED VIOLIN
+
+
+I
+
+In the year 1828, an old German, a music teacher, came to Paris with
+his pupil and settled unostentatiously in one of the quiet faubourgs
+of the metropolis. The first rejoiced in the name of Samuel Klaus; the
+second answered to the more poetical appellation of Franz Stenio. The
+younger man was a violinist, gifted, as rumor went, with extraordinary,
+almost miraculous talent. Yet as he was poor and had not hitherto
+made a name for himself in Europe, he remained for several years in
+the capital of France--the heart and pulse of capricious continental
+fashion--unknown and unappreciated. Franz was a Styrian by birth, and,
+at the time of the event to be presently described, he was a young
+man considerably under thirty. A philosopher and a dreamer by nature,
+imbued with all the mystic oddities of true genius, he reminded one of
+some of the heroes in Hoffmann's _Contes Fantastiques_. His earlier
+existence had been a very unusual, in fact, quite an eccentric one, and
+its history must be briefly told--for the better understanding of the
+present story.
+
+Born of very pious country people, in a quiet burg among the Styrian
+Alps; nursed "by the native gnomes who watched over his cradle";
+growing up in the weird atmosphere of the ghouls and vampires who play
+such a prominent part in the household of every Styrian and Slavonian
+in Southern Austria; educated later, as a student, in the shadow of
+the old Rhenish castles of Germany; Franz from his childhood had
+passed through every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called
+"supernatural." He had also studied at one time the "occult arts" with
+an enthusiastic disciple of Paracelsus and Kunrath; alchemy had few
+theoretical secrets for him; and he had dabbled in "ceremonial magic"
+and "sorcery" with some Hungarian Tziganes. Yet he loved above all else
+music, and above music--his violin.
+
+At the age of twenty-two he suddenly gave up his practical studies in
+the occult, and from that day, though as devoted as ever in thought
+to the beautiful Grecian Gods, he surrendered himself entirely to his
+art. Of his classic studies he had retained only that which related
+to the muses--Euterpe especially, at whose altar he worshipped--and
+Orpheus whose magic lyre he tried to emulate with his violin. Except
+his dreamy belief in the nymphs and the sirens, on account probably of
+the double relationship of the latter to the muses through Calliope and
+Orpheus, he was interested but little in the matters of this sublunary
+world. All his aspirations mounted, like incense, with the wave of the
+heavenly harmony that he drew from his instrument, to a higher and a
+nobler sphere. He dreamed awake, and lived a real though an enchanted
+life only during those hours when his magic bow carried him along the
+wave of sound to the Pagan Olympus, to the feet of Euterpe. A strange
+child he had ever been in his own home, where tales of magic and
+witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil; a still stranger boy he
+had become, until finally he had blossomed into manhood, without one
+single characteristic of youth. Never had a fair face attracted his
+attention; not for one moment had his thoughts turned from his solitary
+studies to a life beyond that of a mystic Bohemian. Content with his
+own company, he had thus passed the best years of his youth and manhood
+with his violin for his chief idol, and with the Gods and Goddesses of
+old Greece for his audience, in perfect ignorance of practical life.
+His whole existence had been one long day of dreams, of melody and
+sunlight, and he had never felt any other aspirations.
+
+How useless, but oh, how glorious those dreams! how vivid! and why
+should he desire any better fate? Was he not all that he wanted to
+be, transformed in a second of thought into one or another hero; from
+Orpheus, who held all nature breathless, to the urchin who piped away
+under the plane tree to the naiads of Callirrhoe's crystal fountain?
+Did not the swift-footed nymphs frolic at his beck and call to the
+sound of the magic flute of the Arcadian Shepherd--who was himself?
+Behold, the Goddess of Love and Beauty herself descending from on high,
+attracted by the sweet-voiced notes of his violin!... Yet there came
+a time when he preferred Syrinx to Aphrodite--not as the fair nymph
+pursued by Pan, but after her transformation by the merciful Gods into
+the reed out of which the frustrated God of the Shepherds had made
+his magic pipe. For also, with time, ambition grows and is rarely
+satisfied. When he tried to emulate on his violin the enchanting sounds
+that resounded in his mind, the whole of Parnassus kept silent under
+the spell, or joined in heavenly chorus; but the audience he finally
+craved was composed of more than the Gods sung by Hesiod, verily of the
+most appreciative _m�lomanes_ of European capitals. He felt jealous of
+the magic pipe, and would fain have had it at his command.
+
+"Oh, that I could allure a nymph into my beloved violin!"--he often
+cried, after awakening from one of his day-dreams. "Oh, that I could
+only span in spirit flight the abyss of Time! Oh, that I could find
+myself for one short day a partaker of the secret arts of the Gods,
+a God myself, in the sight and hearing of enraptured humanity; and,
+having learned the mystery of the lyre of Orpheus, or secured within my
+violin a siren, thereby benefit mortals to my own glory!"
+
+Thus, having for long years dreamed in the company of the Gods of his
+fancy, he now took to dreaming of the transitory glories of fame upon
+this earth. But at this time he was suddenly called home by his widowed
+mother from one of the German universities where he had lived for the
+last year or two. This was an event which brought his plans to an end,
+at least so far as the immediate future was concerned, for he had
+hitherto drawn upon her alone for his meager pittance, and his means
+were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place.
+
+His return had a very unexpected result. His mother, whose only love
+he was on earth, died soon after she had welcomed her Benjamin back;
+and the good wives of the burg exercised their swift tongues for many a
+month after as to the real causes of that death.
+
+Frau Stenio, before Franz's return, was a healthy, buxom, middle-aged
+body, strong and hearty. She was a pious and a God-fearing soul
+too, who had never failed in saying her prayers, nor had missed an
+early mass for years during his absence. On the first Sunday after
+her son had settled at home--a day that she had been longing for and
+had anticipated for months in joyous visions, in which she saw him
+kneeling by her side in the little church on the hill--she called him
+from the foot of the stairs. The hour had come when her pious dream was
+to be realized, and she was waiting for him, carefully wiping the dust
+from the prayer-book he had used in his boyhood. But instead of Franz,
+it was his violin that responded to her call, mixing its sonorous voice
+with the rather cracked tones of the peal of the merry Sunday bells.
+The fond mother was somewhat shocked at hearing the prayer-inspiring
+sounds drowned by the weird, fantastic notes of the "Dance of the
+Witches"; they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking. But she almost
+fainted upon hearing the definite refusal of her well-beloved son to
+go to church. He never went to church, he coolly remarked. It was loss
+of time; besides which, the loud peals of the old church organ jarred
+on his nerves. Nothing should induce him to submit to the torture of
+listening to that cracked organ. He was firm and nothing could move
+him. To her supplications and remonstrances he put an end by offering
+to play for her a "Hymn to the Sun" he had just composed.
+
+From that memorable Sunday morning, Frau Stenio lost her usual serenity
+of mind. She hastened to lay her sorrows and seek for consolation at
+the foot of the confessional; but that which she heard in response
+from the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated soul with
+dismay and almost with despair. A feeling of fear, a sense of profound
+terror, which soon became a chronic state with her, pursued her from
+that moment; her nights became disturbed and sleepless, her days passed
+in prayer and lamentations. In her maternal anxiety for the salvation
+of her beloved son's soul, and for his _post mortem_ welfare, she made
+a series of rash vows. Finding that neither the Latin petition to the
+Mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser, nor yet the
+humble supplications in German, addressed by herself to every saint
+she had reason to believe was residing in Paradise, worked the desired
+effect, she took to pilgrimages to distant shrines. During one of these
+journeys to a holy chapel situated high up in the mountains, she caught
+cold, amidst the glaciers of the Tyrol, and redescended only to take
+to a sick bed, from which she arose no more. Frau Stenio's vow had led
+her, in one sense, to the desired result. The poor woman was now given
+an opportunity of seeking out in _propria persona_ the saints she had
+believed in so well, and of pleading face to face for the recreant son,
+who refused adherence to them and to the Church, scoffed at monk and
+confessional, and held the organ in such horror.
+
+Franz sincerely lamented his mother's death. Unaware of being the
+indirect cause of it, he felt no remorse; but selling the modest
+household goods and chattels, light in purse and heart, he resolved to
+travel on foot for a year or two, before settling down to any definite
+profession.
+
+A hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe, and to try his luck
+in France, lurked at the bottom of this traveling project, but his
+Bohemian habits of life were too strong to be abruptly abandoned. He
+placed his small capital with a banker for a rainy day, and started
+on his pedestrian journey _via_ Germany and Austria. His violin paid
+for his board and lodging in the inns and farms on his way, and he
+passed his days in the green fields and in the solemn silent woods,
+face to face with Nature, dreaming all the time as usual with his eyes
+open. During the three months of his pleasant travels to and fro, he
+never descended for one moment from Parnassus; but, as an alchemist
+transmutes lead into gold, so he transformed everything on his way
+into a song of Hesiod or Anacreon. Every evening, while fiddling for
+his supper and bed, whether on a green lawn or in the hall of a rustic
+inn, his fancy changed the whole scene for him. Village swains and
+maidens became transfigured into Arcadian shepherds and nymphs. The
+sand-covered floor was now a green sward; the uncouth couples spinning
+round in a measured waltz with the wild grace of tamed bears became
+priests and priestesses of Terpsichore; the bulky, cherry-cheeked and
+blue-eyed daughters of rural Germany were the Hesperides circling
+around the trees laden with the golden apples. Nor did the melodious
+strains of the Arcadian demi-gods piping on their syrinxes, and audible
+but to his own enchanted ear, vanish with the dawn. For no sooner was
+the curtain of sleep raised from his eyes than he would sally forth
+into a new magic realm of day-dreams. On his way to some dark and
+solemn pine-forest, he played incessantly, to himself and to everything
+else. He fiddled to the green hill, and forthwith the mountain and the
+moss-covered rocks moved forward to hear him the better, as they had
+done at the sound of the Orphean lyre. He fiddled to the merry-voiced
+brook, to the hurrying river, and both slackened their speed and
+stopped their waves, and, becoming silent, seemed to listen to him in
+an entranced rapture. Even the long-legged stork who stood meditatively
+on one leg on the thatched top of the rustic mill, gravely resolving
+unto himself the problem of his too-long existence, sent out after
+him a long and strident cry, screeching, "Art thou Orpheus himself, O
+Stenio?"
+
+It was a period of full bliss, of a daily and almost hourly exaltation.
+The last words of his dying mother, whispering to him of the horrors
+of eternal condemnation, had left him unaffected, and the only vision
+her warning evoked in him was that of Pluto. By a ready association of
+ideas, he saw the lord of the dark nether kingdom greeting him as he
+had greeted the husband of Eurydice before him. Charmed with the magic
+sounds of his violin, the wheel of Ixion was at a standstill once more,
+thus affording relief to the wretched seducer of Juno, and giving the
+lie to those who claim eternity for the duration of the punishment of
+condemned sinners. He perceived Tantalus forgetting his never-ceasing
+thirst, and smacking his lips as he drank in the heaven-born melody;
+the stone of Sisyphus becoming motionless, the Furies themselves
+smiling on him, and the sovereign of the gloomy regions delighted, and
+awarding preference to his violin over the lyre of Orpheus. Taken _au
+s�rieux_, mythology thus seems a decided antidote to fear, in the face
+of theological threats, especially when strengthened with an insane and
+passionate love of music; with Franz, Euterpe proved always victorious
+in every contest, aye, even with Hell itself!
+
+But there is an end to everything, and very soon Franz had to give up
+uninterrupted dreaming. He had reached the university town where dwelt
+his old violin teacher, Samuel Klaus. When this antiquated musician
+found that his beloved and favorite pupil, Franz, had been left poor
+in purse and still poorer in earthly affections, he felt his strong
+attachment to the boy awaken with tenfold force. He took Franz to his
+heart, and forthwith adopted him as his son.
+
+The old teacher reminded people of one of those grotesque figures which
+look as if they had just stepped out of some medieval panel. And yet
+Klaus, with his fantastic _allures_ of a night-goblin, had the most
+loving heart, as tender as that of a woman, and the self-sacrificing
+nature of an old Christian martyr. When Franz had briefly narrated to
+him the history of his last few years, the professor took him by the
+hand, and leading him into his study simply said:
+
+"Stop with me, and put an end to your Bohemian life. Make yourself
+famous. I am old and childless and will be your father. Let us live
+together and forget all save fame."
+
+And forthwith he offered to proceed with Franz to Paris, _via_ several
+large German cities, where they would stop to give concerts.
+
+In a few days Klaus succeeded in making Franz forget his vagrant life
+and its artistic independence, and reawakened in his pupil his now
+dormant ambition and desire for worldly fame. Hitherto, since his
+mother's death, he had been content to received applause only from the
+Gods and Goddesses who inhabited his vivid fancy; now he began to crave
+once more for the admiration of mortals. Under the clever and careful
+training of old Klaus his remarkable talent gained in strength and
+powerful charm with every day, and his reputation grew and expanded
+with every city and town wherein he made himself heard. His ambition
+was being rapidly realized; the presiding genii of various musical
+centers to whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed him
+_the one_ violinist of the day, and the public declared loudly that he
+stood unrivaled by any one whom they had ever heard. These laudations
+very soon made both master and pupil completely lose their heads.
+
+But Paris was less ready with such appreciation. Paris makes
+reputations for itself, and will take none on faith. They had been
+living in it for almost three years, and were still climbing with
+difficulty the artist's Calvary, when an event occurred which put
+an end even to their most modest expectations. The first arrival of
+Niccolo Paganini was suddenly heralded, and threw Lutetia into a
+convulsion of expectation. The unparalleled artist arrived, and--all
+Paris fell at once at his feet.
+
+
+II
+
+Now it is a well known fact that a superstition born in the dark days
+of medieval superstition, and surviving almost to the middle of the
+present century, attributed all such abnormal, out-of-the-way talent as
+that of Paganini to "supernatural" agency. Every great and marvelous
+artist had been accused in his day of dealings with the devil. A few
+instances will suffice to refresh the reader's memory.
+
+Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the seventeenth century,
+was denounced as one who got his best inspirations from the Evil One,
+with whom he was, it was said, in regular league. This accusation
+was, of course, due to the almost magical impression he produced upon
+his audiences. His inspired performance on the violin secured for him
+in his native country the title of "Master of Nations." The _Sonate
+du Diable_, also called "Tartini's Dream"--as everyone who has heard
+it will be ready to testify--is the most weird melody ever heard or
+invented: hence, the marvelous composition has become the source of
+endless legends. Nor were they entirely baseless, since it was he,
+himself, who was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed to
+having written it on awakening from a dream, in which he had heard his
+sonata performed by Satan, for his benefit, and in consequence of a
+bargain made with his infernal majesty.
+
+Several famous singers, even, whose exceptional voices struck the
+hearers with superstitious admiration, have not escaped a like
+accusation. Pasta's splendid voice was attributed in her day to the
+fact that, three months before her birth, the diva's mother was carried
+during a trance to heaven, and there treated to a vocal concert of
+seraphs. Malibran was indebted for her voice to St. Cecelia, while
+others said she owed it to a demon who watched over her cradle and sung
+the baby to sleep. Finally, Paganini--the unrivaled performer, the mean
+Italian, who like Dryden's Jubal striking on the "chorded shell" forced
+the throngs that followed him to worship the divine sounds produced,
+and made people say that "less than a God could not dwell within the
+hollow of his violin"--Paganini left a legend too.
+
+The almost supernatural art of the greatest violin player that the
+world has ever known was often speculated upon, never understood.
+The effect produced by him on his audience was literally marvelous,
+overpowering. The great Rossini is said to have wept like a sentimental
+German maiden on hearing him play for the first time. The Princess
+Elisa of Lucca, a sister of the great Napoleon, in whose service
+Paganini was, as director of her private orchestra, for a long time
+was unable to hear him play without fainting. In women he produced
+nervous fits and hysterics at his will; stout-hearted men he drove to
+frenzy. He changed cowards into heroes and made the bravest soldiers
+feel like so many nervous school-girls. Is it to be wondered at, then,
+that hundreds of weird tales circulated for long years about and
+around the mysterious Genoese, that modern Orpheus of Europe? One of
+these was especially ghastly. It was rumored, and was believed by more
+people than would probably like to confess it, that the strings of his
+violin were made of _human intestines, according to all the rules and
+requirements of the Black Art_.
+
+Exaggerated as this idea may seem to some, it has nothing impossible in
+it; and it is more than probable that it was this legend that led to
+the extraordinary events which we are about to narrate. Human organs
+are often used by the Eastern Black Magician, so-called, and it is an
+averred fact that some Beng�l� T�ntrikas (reciters of _tantras_, or
+"invocations to the demon," as a reverend writer has described them)
+use human corpses, and certain internal and external organs pertaining
+to them, as powerful magical agents for bad purposes.
+
+However this may be, now that the magnetic and mesmeric potencies
+of hypnotism are recognized as facts by most physicians, it may be
+suggested with less danger than heretofore that the extraordinary
+effects of Paganini's violin-playing were not, perhaps, entirely due
+to his talent and genius. The wonder and awe he so easily excited were
+as much caused by his external appearance, "which had something weird
+and demoniacal in it," according to certain of his biographers, as by
+the inexpressible charm of his execution and his remarkable mechanical
+skill. The latter is demonstrated by his perfect imitation of the
+flageolet, and his performance of long and magnificent melodies on the
+G string alone. In this performance, which many an artist has tried to
+copy without success, he remains unrivaled to this day.
+
+It is owing to this remarkable appearance of his--termed by his
+friends eccentric, and by his too nervous victims, diabolical--that
+he experienced great difficulties in refuting certain ugly rumors.
+These were credited far more easily in his day than they would be
+now. It was whispered throughout Italy, and even in his own native
+town, that Paganini had murdered his wife, and, later on, a mistress,
+both of whom he had loved passionately, and both of whom he had not
+hesitated to sacrifice to his fiendish ambition. He had made himself
+proficient in magic arts, it was asserted, and had succeeded thereby
+in imprisoning the souls of his two victims in his violin--his famous
+Cremona.
+
+It is maintained by the immediate friends of Ernst T.�W. Hoffmann, the
+celebrated author of _Die Elixire des Teufels_, _Meister Martin_, and
+other charming and mystical tales, that Councillor Crespel, in the
+_Violin of Cremona_, was taken from the legend about Paganini. It is,
+as all who have read it know, the history of a celebrated violin, into
+which the voice and the soul of a famous diva, a woman whom Crespel had
+loved and killed, had passed, and to which was added the voice of his
+beloved daughter, Antonia.
+
+Nor was this superstition utterly ungrounded, nor was Hoffmann to
+be blamed for adopting it, after he had heard Paganini's playing.
+The extraordinary facility with which the artist drew out of his
+instrument, not only the most unearthly sounds, but positively human
+voices, justified the suspicion. Such effects might well have startled
+an audience and thrown terror into many a nervous heart. Add to this
+the impenetrable mystery connected with a certain period of Paganini's
+youth, and the most wild tales about him must be found in a measure
+justifiable, and even excusable; especially among a nation whose
+ancestors knew the Borgias and the Medicis of Black Art fame.
+
+
+III
+
+In those pre-telegraphic days, newspapers were limited, and the wings
+of fame had a heavier flight than they have now. Franz had hardly heard
+of Paganini; and when he did, he swore he would rival, if not eclipse,
+the Genoese magician. Yes, he would either become the most famous of
+all living violinists, or he would break his instrument and put an end
+to his life at the same time.
+
+Old Klaus rejoiced at such a determination. He rubbed his hands in
+glee, and jumping about on his lame leg like a crippled satyr, he
+flattered and incensed his pupil, believing himself all the while to be
+performing a sacred duty to the holy and majestic cause of art.
+
+Upon first setting foot in Paris, three years before, Franz had
+all but failed. Musical critics pronounced him a rising star, but
+had all agreed that he required a few more years' practice, before
+he could hope to carry his audiences by storm. Therefore, after a
+desperate study of over two years and uninterrupted preparations, the
+Styrian artist had finally made himself ready for his first serious
+appearance in the great Opera House where a public concert before
+the most exacting critics of the old world was to be held; at this
+critical moment Paganini's arrival in the European metropolis placed
+an obstacle in the way of the realization of his hopes, and the old
+German professor wisely postponed his pupil's _d�but_. At first he had
+simply smiled at the wild enthusiasm, the laudatory hymns sung about
+the Genoese violinist, and the almost superstitious awe with which his
+name was pronounced. But very soon Paganini's name became a burning
+iron in the hearts of both the artists, and a threatening phantom in
+the mind of Klaus. A few days more, and they shuddered at the very
+mention of their great rival, whose success became with every night
+more unprecedented.
+
+The first series of concerts was over, but neither Klaus nor Franz
+had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him and of judging for
+themselves. So great and so beyond their means was the charge for
+admission, and so small the hope of getting a free pass from a brother
+artist justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary transactions,
+that they had to wait for a chance, as did so many others. But the day
+came when neither master nor pupil could control their impatience any
+longer; so they pawned their watches, and with the proceeds bought two
+modest seats.
+
+Who can describe the enthusiasm, the triumphs, of this famous, and at
+the same time fatal night! The audience was frantic; men wept and women
+screamed and fainted; while both Klaus and Stenio sat looking paler
+than two ghosts. At the first touch of Paganini's magic bow, both Franz
+and Samuel felt as if the icy hand of death had touched them. Carried
+away by an irresistible enthusiasm, which turned into a violent,
+unearthly mental torture, they dared neither look into each other's
+faces, nor exchange one word during the whole performance.
+
+At midnight, while the chosen delegates of the Musical Societies
+and the Conservatory of Paris unhitched the horses, and dragged the
+carriage of the grand artist home in triumph, the two Germans returned
+to their modest lodging, and it was a pitiful sight to see them.
+Mournful and desperate, they placed themselves in their usual seats at
+the fire-corner, and neither for a while opened his mouth.
+
+"Samuel!" at last exclaimed Franz, pale as death itself. "Samuel--it
+remains for us now but to die!... Do you hear me?... We are worthless!
+We were two madmen to have ever hoped that any one in this world would
+ever rival ... him."
+
+The name of Paganini stuck in his throat, as in utter despair he fell
+into his arm chair.
+
+The old professor's wrinkles suddenly became purple. His little
+greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescently as, bending toward his pupil, he
+whispered to him in hoarse and broken tones:
+
+"_Nein, Nein!_ Thou art wrong, my Franz! I have taught thee, and thou
+hast learned all of the great art that a simple mortal, and a Christian
+by baptism, can learn from another simple mortal. Am I to blame because
+these accursed Italians, in order to reign unequaled in the domain of
+art, have recourse to Satan and the diabolical effects of Black Magic?"
+
+Franz turned his eyes upon his old master. There was a sinister light
+burning in those glittering orbs; a light telling plainly that, to
+secure such a power, he, too, would not scruple to sell himself, body
+and soul, to the Evil One.
+
+But he said not a word, and, turning his eyes from his old master's
+face, gazed dreamily at the dying embers.
+
+The same long-forgotten incoherent dreams, which, after seeming such
+realities to him in his younger days, had been given up entirely, and
+had gradually faded from his mind, now crowded back into it with the
+same force and vividness as of old. The grimacing shades of Ixion,
+Sisyphus and Tantalus resurrected and stood before him, saying:
+
+"What matters hell--in which thou believest not. And even if hell there
+be, it is the hell described by the old Greeks, not that of the modern
+bigots--a locality full of conscious shadows, to whom thou canst be a
+second Orpheus."
+
+Franz felt that he was going mad, and, turning instinctively, he
+looked his old master once more right in the face. Then his bloodshot
+eye evaded the gaze of Klaus.
+
+Whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind of his pupil,
+or whether he wanted to draw him out, to make him speak, and thus to
+divert his thoughts, must remain as hypothetical to the reader as
+it is to the writer. Whatever may have been in his mind, the German
+enthusiast went on, speaking with a feigned calmness:
+
+"Franz, my dear boy, I tell you that the art of the accursed Italian
+is not natural; that it is due neither to study nor to genius. It
+never was acquired in the usual, natural way. You need not stare at
+me in that wild manner, for what I say is in the mouth of millions of
+people. Listen to what I now tell you, and try to understand. You have
+heard the strange tale whispered about the famous Tartini? He died one
+fine Sabbath night strangled by his familiar demon, who had taught
+him how to endow his violin with a human voice, by shutting up in it,
+by means of incantations, the soul of a young virgin. Paganini did
+more. In order to endow his instrument with the faculty of emitting
+human sounds, such as sobs, despairing cries, supplications, moans
+of love and fury--in short, the most heart-rending notes of the human
+voice--Paganini became the murderer not only of his wife and his
+mistress, but also of a friend, who was more tenderly attached to
+him than any other being on this earth. He then made the four chords
+of his magic violin out of the intestines of his last victim. This
+is the secret of his enchanting talent of that overpowering melody,
+that combination of sounds, which you will never be able to master
+unless...."
+
+The old man could not finish his sentence. He staggered back before the
+fiendish look of his pupil, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an expression which
+reminded Klaus of those of a hyena. His pallor was cadaverous. For some
+time he could not speak, but only gasp for breath. At last he slowly
+muttered:
+
+"Are you in earnest?"
+
+"I am, as I hope to help you."
+
+"And.... And do you really believe that had I only the means of
+obtaining human intestines for strings, I could rival Paganini?" asked
+Franz, after a moment's pause, and casting down his eyes.
+
+The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange look of
+determination upon it, softly answered:
+
+"Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our purpose; they must
+have belonged to some one who had loved us well, with an unselfish,
+holy love. Tartini endowed his violin with the life of a virgin; but
+that virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The fiendish artist
+had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he managed to catch her last
+breath as she expired, pronouncing his beloved name, and he then
+transferred this breath to his violin. As to Paganini, I have just told
+you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim, though, that he
+murdered him to get possession of his intestines.
+
+"Oh, for the power of the human voice!" Samuel went on, after a brief
+pause. "What can equal the eloquence, the magic spell of the human
+voice? Do you think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this
+great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one right into the
+clutches of him ... who must remain unnamed at night?" he added, with
+a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth.
+
+Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to behold, he left his
+place, took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging, and,
+with one powerful grasp of the chords, he tore them out and flung them
+into the fire.
+
+Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were hissing upon the
+coals, where, among the blazing logs, they wriggled and curled like so
+many living snakes.
+
+"By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of Circe!" he exclaimed,
+with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals; "by the Furies of
+Hell and Pluto himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O Samuel, my
+master, never to touch a violin again until I can string it with four
+human chords. May I be accursed for ever and ever if I do!" He fell
+senseless on the floor, with a deep sob, that ended like a funeral
+wail; old Samuel lifted him up as he would have lifted a child, and
+carried him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a physician.
+
+
+IV
+
+For several days after this painful scene Franz was very ill, ill
+almost beyond recovery. The physician declared him to be suffering
+from brain fever and said that the worst was to be feared. For nine
+long days the patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was nursing
+him night and day with the solicitude of the tenderest mother, was
+horrified at the work of his own hands. For the first time since their
+acquaintance began, the old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his
+pupil, was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird,
+superstitious, cold, and, at the same time, passionate nature; and--he
+trembled at what he discovered. For he saw that which he had failed
+to perceive before--Franz as he was in reality, and not as he seemed
+to superficial observers. Music was the life of the young man, and
+adulation was the air he breathed, without which that life became a
+burden; from the chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and
+being, but the applause of men and even of Gods was necessary to its
+support. He saw unveiled before his eyes a genuine, artistic, _earthly_
+soul, with its divine counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses,
+all fancy and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening to
+the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy Klaus felt as if
+he were for the first time in his long life exploring a marvelous
+and untraveled region, a human nature not of this world but of some
+incomplete planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than once he
+asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his "boy" to
+let him die before he returned to consciousness.
+
+But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an idea.
+Franz had bewitched his truly artistic nature, and now old Klaus felt
+as though their two lives were inseparably linked together. That he
+could thus feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to save
+Franz, even at the expense of his own old and, as he thought, useless
+life.
+
+The seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis. For
+twenty-four hours the patient never closed his eyes, nor remained for a
+moment silent; he raved continuously during the whole time. His visions
+were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic, ghastly
+figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small dark
+room, in regular and uninterrupted procession, and he greeted each by
+name as he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself as
+Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands made of human intestines.
+At the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black waters of the river Styx
+were running.... They had deserted Arcadia, and were now endeavoring
+to encircle within a seven-fold embrace the rock upon which he was
+suffering....
+
+"Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean rock, old man?" he roared
+into his adopted father's ear.... "Listen then, ... its name is ...
+called ... Samuel Klaus...."
+
+"Yes, yes!..." the German murmured disconsolately. "It is I who killed
+him, while seeking to console. The news of Paganini's magic arts struck
+his fancy too vividly.... Oh, my poor, poor boy!"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" The patient broke into a loud and discordant laugh.
+"Aye, poor old man, sayest thou?... So, so, thou art of poor stuff,
+anyhow, and wouldst look well only when stretched upon a fine Cremona
+violin!..."
+
+Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over the poor maniac,
+and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress as tender and as gentle as that
+of a doting mother, he left the sick-room for a few instants, to seek
+relief in his own garret. When he returned, the ravings were following
+another channel. Franz was singing, trying to imitate the sounds of a
+violin.
+
+Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the sick man became
+perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of fire clutching at his violin.
+Their skeleton hands, from each finger of which grew a flaming claw,
+beckoned to old Samuel.... They approached and surrounded the old
+master, and were preparing to rip him open ... him "the only man on
+this earth who loves me with an unselfish, holy love, and ... whose
+intestines can be of any good at all!" he went on whispering, with
+glaring eyes and demon laugh....
+
+By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared, and by the end
+of the ninth day Stenio had left his bed, having no recollection of his
+illness, and no suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his inner
+thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible idea as
+the sacrifice of his old master to his ambition had ever entered his
+mind? Hardly. The only immediate result of his fatal illness was, that
+as, by reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no issue,
+another passion awoke, which might avail to feed his ambition and his
+insatiable fancy. He plunged headlong into the study of the Occult
+Arts, of Alchemy and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young
+dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his,
+as he thought, for ever lost violin....
+
+Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation about Paganini
+was never resumed between the master and the pupil. But a profound
+melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a
+word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual
+place. It was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them.
+
+The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic, even avoiding the
+mention of music. Once, as his old professor, after long hesitation,
+took out his own violin from its dust-covered case and prepared to
+play, Franz gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the first
+notes of the bow, however, he glared like a madman, and rushing out
+of the house, remained for hours, wandering in the streets. Then old
+Samuel in his turn threw his instrument down, and locked himself up in
+his room till the following morning.
+
+One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and gloomy, old
+Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat, and after hopping about the room
+in a magpie fashion, approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon
+the young man's brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice:
+
+"Is it not time to put an end to all this?"...
+
+Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz echoed, as in a
+dream:
+
+"Yes, it is time to put an end to this."
+
+Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.
+
+On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was astonished not
+to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him. But he had
+greatly altered during the last few months, and he at first paid no
+attention to his absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into
+the adjoining room, a little parlor where they had their meals, and
+which separated their two bedrooms. The fire had not been lighted since
+the embers had died out on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere
+visible of the professor's busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties.
+Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz took his usual place
+at the corner of the now cold fire-place, and fell into an aimless
+reverie. As he stretched himself in his old arm-chair, raising both
+his hands to clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his,
+his hand came into contact with something on a shelf at his back; he
+knocked against a case, and brought it violently on the ground.
+
+It was old Klaus' violin-case that came down to the floor with such
+a sudden crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it,
+rolling to the feet of Franz. And then the chords, striking against
+the brass fender emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the
+sigh of an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole room, and
+reverberated in the head and the very heart of the young man. The
+effect of that broken violin-string was magical.
+
+"Samuel!" cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from their sockets,
+and an unknown terror suddenly taking possession of his whole being.
+"Samuel! what has happened?... My good, my dear old master!" he called
+out, hastening to the professor's little room, and throwing the door
+violently open. No one answered, all was silent within.
+
+He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own voice, so changed
+and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment. No reply came in response
+to his call. Naught followed but a dead silence ... that stillness
+which, in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the presence
+of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a tomb, such silence
+acquires a mysterious power, which strikes the sensitive soul with a
+nameless terror.... The little room was dark, and Franz hastened to
+open the shutters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless.... At the sight
+of the corpse of him who had loved him so well, and had been to him
+more than a father, Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling,
+a terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist got the
+better of the despair of the man, and smothered the feelings of the
+latter in a few seconds.
+
+A note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table near
+the corpse. With trembling hand, the violinist tore open the envelope,
+and read the following:
+
+  MY BELOVED SON, FRANZ,
+
+  When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice that
+  your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for
+  your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an inanimate lump
+  of clay. Of your old teacher there now remains but a clod of cold
+  organic matter. I need not prompt you as to what you have to do
+  with it. Fear not stupid prejudices. It is for your future fame
+  that I have made an offering of my body, and you would be guilty
+  of the blackest ingratitude were you now to render useless this
+  sacrifice. When you shall have replaced the chords upon your
+  violin, and these chords a portion of my own self, under your
+  touch it will acquire the power of that accursed sorcerer, all the
+  magic voices of Paganini's instrument. You will find therein my
+  voice, my sighs and groans, my song of welcome, the prayerful sobs
+  of my infinite and sorrowful sympathy, my love for you. And now,
+  my Franz, fear nobody! Take your instrument with you, and dog the
+  steps of him who filled our lives with bitterness and despair!...
+  Appear in every arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a
+  rival, and bravely throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face.
+  O Franz! then only wilt thou hear with what a magic power the
+  full notes of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin.
+  Perchance, with a last caressing touch of its chords, thou wilt
+  remember that they once formed a portion of thine old teacher, who
+  now embraces and blesses thee for the last time.
+
+        SAMUEL
+
+Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but they dried up
+instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate hope and pride, the two
+orbs of the future magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the
+dead man, shone like the eyes of a demon.
+
+Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on that day, after
+the legal inquiry was over. As another note, written with the view
+of satisfying the authorities, had been prudently provided by the
+loving care of the old teacher, the verdict was, "Suicide from causes
+unknown;" after this the coroner and the police retired, leaving the
+bereaved heir alone in the death-room, with the remains of that which
+had once been a living man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the violin had been
+dusted, and four new, stout strings had been stretched upon it. Franz
+dared not look at them. He tried to play, but the bow trembled in his
+hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice-brigand. He then determined
+not to try again, until the portentous night should arrive, when he
+should have a chance of rivaling, nay, of surpassing, Paganini.
+
+The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and was giving a series
+of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium.
+
+
+V
+
+One night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting
+in the dining-room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting
+card, with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a
+young man with wild and staring eyes.
+
+Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons could bear, but
+receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini
+slightly bowed, and then dryly said:
+
+"Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your service."
+
+On the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance
+of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing the strange
+notice:
+
+  On the night of ... at the Grand Theater of ... and for the
+  first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a German
+  violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the
+  world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel--upon their
+  violins. He purposes to compete with the great "virtuoso" in the
+  execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous
+  Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in
+  competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated "Fantaisie
+  Caprice" of the latter, known as "The Witches."
+
+The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, amid his greatest
+triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled the
+usual price of admission, but still the theater could not hold the
+crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and the "duel" was in
+everyone's mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed
+the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and
+down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen
+on his bed from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a
+death-like and dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke,
+but finding it too early to rise he fell to sleep again. And then he
+had a vivid dream--so vivid indeed, so life-like, that from its terrible
+realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.
+
+He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its case,
+the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those
+terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In
+accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first
+trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings,
+for he had since always practised on another instrument. But now in
+his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in
+it was attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of
+detaching his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case
+slowly rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two
+small, phosphorescent green eyes--eyes but too familiar to him--fixing
+themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill
+voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs--the voice and orbs of
+Samuel Klaus himself--resounded in Stenio's horrified ear, and he heard
+it say:
+
+"Franz, my beloved boy.... Franz, I cannot, no, _I cannot_ separate
+myself from ... _them_!"
+
+And "they" twanged piteously inside the case.
+
+Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually
+freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head....
+
+"It's but a dream, an empty dream!" he attempted to formulate in his
+mind.
+
+"I have tried my best, Franzchen.... I have tried my best to sever
+myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces
+..." pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. "Wilt thou help me to do
+so?..."
+
+Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the
+case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior
+power, like some living wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper
+and more jerky with every new pull.
+
+It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those sounds. He had
+often remarked them before--indeed, ever since he had used his master's
+viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every occasion a
+feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their
+cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a
+hallucination.
+
+But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact, whether in dream
+or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the hallucination--if
+hallucination it were--was far more real and vivid than any reality.
+He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens in
+nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a finger.... He felt
+hopelessly paralyzed.
+
+The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment, and
+at last something inside the case snapped violently. The vision of his
+Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes,
+throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable terror.
+
+He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held
+him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the invisible
+Presence repeated:
+
+"Do, oh, do ... help me to cut myself off----"
+
+Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger
+defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.
+
+"Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!" he cried, in hoarse
+and trembling tones.
+
+He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while firmly pressing
+his left hand on it, he seized with the right a piece of rosin from
+the table and he drew on the leathered-covered top the sign of the
+six-pointed star--the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the
+rebellious djins inside their prisons.
+
+A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her dead little ones,
+came out of the violin-case:
+
+"Thou art ungrateful ... very ungrateful, my Franz!" sobbed the
+blubbering "spirit-voice." "But I forgive ... for I still love thee
+well. Yet thou canst not shut me in ... boy. Behold!"
+
+[Illustration: "HE VIOLENTLY SHUT DOWN THE SELF-RAISING LID AND DREW ON
+THE LEATHER-COVERED TOP THE SIGN OF THE SIX-POINTED STAR, THE SEAL OF
+KING SOLOMON."]
+
+And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered case and table,
+and rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape. Then it
+began growing, and as it grew, Franz felt himself gradually enfolded in
+cold and damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave a terrible
+cry and--awoke; but, strangely enough, not on his bed, but near the
+table, just as he had dreamed, pressing the violin-case desperately
+with both his hands.
+
+"It was but a dream, ... after all," he muttered, still terrified, but
+relieved of the load on his heaving breast.
+
+With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and unlocked the case to
+inspect the violin. He found it covered with dust, but otherwise sound
+and in order, and he suddenly felt himself as cool and determined as
+ever. Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the bow,
+tightened the strings and tuned them. He even went so far as to try
+upon it the first notes of the "Witches"; first cautiously and timidly,
+then using his bow boldly and with full force.
+
+The sound of that loud, solitary note--defiant as the war trumpet of a
+conqueror, sweet and majestic as the touch of a seraph on his golden
+harp in the fancy of the faithful--thrilled through the very soul of
+Franz. It revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected potency in his bow,
+which ran on in strains that filled the room with the richest swell
+of melody, unheard by the artist until that night. Commencing in
+uninterrupted _legato_ tones, his bow sang to him of sun-bright hope
+and beauty, of moonlit nights, when the soft and balmy stillness
+endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and inanimate with
+a voice and a song of love. For a few brief moments it was a torrent of
+melody, the harmony of which, "tuned to soft woe," was calculated to
+make mountains weep, had there been any in the room, and to soothe
+
+    ... even th' inexorable powers of hell,
+
+the presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest hotel room.
+Suddenly, the solemn _legato_ chant, contrary to all laws of harmony,
+quivered, became _arpeggios_, and ended in shrill _staccatos_, like the
+notes of a hyena laugh. The same creeping sensation of terror, as he
+had before felt, came over him, and Franz threw the bow away. He had
+recognized the familiar laugh, and would have no more of it. Dressing,
+he locked the bedeviled violin securely in its case, and, taking it
+with him to the dining-room, determined to await quietly the hour of
+trial.
+
+
+VI
+
+The terrible hour of the struggle had come, and Stenio was at his
+post--calm, resolute, almost smiling.
+
+The theater was crowded to suffocation, and there was not even standing
+room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favoritism. The singular
+challenge had reached every quarter to which the post could carry it,
+and gold flowed freely into Paganini's unfathomable pockets, to an
+extent almost satisfying even to his insatiate and venal soul.
+
+It was arranged that Paganini should begin. When he appeared upon
+the stage, the thick walls of the theater shook to their foundations
+with the applause that greeted him. He began and ended his famous
+composition "The Witches" amid a storm of cheers. The shouts of public
+enthusiasm lasted so long that Franz began to think his turn would
+never come. When, at last, Paganini, amid the roaring applause of a
+frantic public, was allowed to retire behind the scenes, his eye fell
+upon Stenio, who was tuning his violin, and he felt amazed at the
+serene calmness, the air of assurance, of the unknown German artist.
+
+When Franz approached the footlights, he was received with icy
+coldness. But for all that, he did not feel in the least disconcerted.
+He looked very pale, but his thin white lips wore a scornful smile as
+response to this dumb unwelcome. He was sure of his triumph.
+
+At the first notes of the prelude of "The Witches" a thrill of
+astonishment passed over the audience. It was Paganini's touch, and--it
+was something more. Some--and they were the majority--thought that never,
+in his best moments of inspiration, had the Italian artist himself,
+in executing that diabolical composition of his, exhibited such an
+extraordinary diabolical power. Under the pressure of the long muscular
+fingers of Franz, the chords shivered like the palpitating intestines
+of a disemboweled victim under the vivisector's knife. They moaned
+melodiously, like a dying child. The large blue eye of the artist,
+fixed with a satanic expression upon the sounding-board, seemed to
+summon forth Orpheus himself from the infernal regions, rather than the
+musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of the violin.
+Sounds seemed to transform themselves into objective shapes, thickly
+and precipitately gathering as at the evocation of a mighty magician,
+and to be whirling around him, like a host of fantastic, infernal
+figures, dancing the witches' "goat dance." In the empty depths of
+the shadowy background of the stage, behind the artist, a nameless
+phantasmogoria, produced by the concussion of unearthly vibrations,
+seemed to form pictures of shameless orgies, of the voluptuous hymens
+of a real witches' Sabbat.... A collective hallucination took hold
+of the public. Panting for breath, ghastly, and trickling with the
+icy perspiration of an inexpressible horror, they sat spell-bound,
+and unable to break the spell of the music by the slightest motion.
+They experienced all the illicit enervating delights of the paradise
+of Mahommed, that come into the disordered fancy of an opium-eating
+Mussulman, and felt at the same time the abject terror, the agony of
+one who struggles against an attack of _delirium tremens_.... Many
+ladies shrieked aloud, others fainted, and strong men gnashed their
+teeth in a state of utter helplessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then came the _finale_. Thundering uninterrupted applause delayed its
+beginning, expanding the momentary pause to a duration of almost a
+quarter of an hour. The bravos were furious, almost hysterical. At
+last, when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile was as
+sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to attack the famous
+_finale_, his eye fell upon Paganini, who, calmly seated in the
+manager's box, had been behind none in zealous applause. The small
+and piercing black eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the
+Stradivarius in the hands of Franz, but otherwise he seemed quite cool
+and unconcerned. His rival's face troubled him for one short instant,
+but he regained his self-possession and, lifting once more his bow,
+drew the first note.
+
+Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and soon knew no bounds.
+The listeners heard and saw indeed. The witches' voices resounded in
+the air, and beyond all the other voices, one voice was heard--
+
+    Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;
+    It seem'd of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
+    The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
+    The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion's roar;
+    The sounds of billows beating on the shore;
+    The groan of winds among the leafy wood,
+    And burst of thunder from the rending cloud;--
+    'Twas these, all these in one....
+
+The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering sounds--famous among
+prodigious musical feats--imitating the precipitate flight of the
+witches before bright dawn; of the unholy women saturated with the
+fumes of their nocturnal Saturnalia, when--a strange thing came to pass
+on the stage. Without the slightest transition, the notes suddenly
+changed. In their aerial flight of ascension and descent, their melody
+was unexpectedly altered in character. The sounds became confused,
+scattered, disconnected ... and then--it seemed from the sounding-board
+of the violin--came out squeaking, jarring tones, like those of a street
+Punch, screaming at the top of a senile voice:
+
+"Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy?... Have not I gloriously kept my
+promise, eh?"
+
+The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize the whole
+situation, those who heard the voice and the _Punchinello_-like tones,
+were freed, as by enchantment, from the terrible charm under which
+they had been held. Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of
+half-anger and half-irritation were now heard from every corner of the
+vast theater. The musicians in the orchestra, with faces still blanched
+from weird emotion, were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole
+audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet to solve the
+enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted, too disposed to laugh
+to remain one moment longer in the building.
+
+But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls and the pit
+became once more motionless, and stood petrified as though struck by
+lightning. What all saw was terrible enough--the handsome though wild
+face of the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect figure
+bent down, as though under the weight of years; but this was nothing
+to that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived. Franz
+Stenio's person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist,
+cloud-like, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually tightening
+round the living form, as though ready to engulf him. And there were
+those also who discerned in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a
+clearly-defined figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of
+a grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old man, whose
+viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the
+violin.
+
+Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was then seen, driving
+his bow furiously across the human chords, with the contortions of a
+demoniac, as we see them represented on medieval cathedral paintings!
+
+An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and breaking now,
+for the last time, through the spell which had again bound them
+motionless, every living creature in the theater made one mad rush
+towards the door. It was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human
+torrent, roaring amid a shower of discordant notes, idiotic squeakings,
+prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous cries of frenzy, above which,
+like the detonations of pistol shots, was heard the consecutive
+bursting of the four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that
+bewitched violin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the theater was emptied of the last man of the audience, the
+terrified manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate
+performer. He was found dead and already stiff, behind the footlights,
+twisted up into the most unnatural of postures, with the "catguts"
+wound curiously around his neck, and his violin shattered into a
+thousand fragments....
+
+When it became publicly known that the unfortunate would-be rival of
+Niccolo Paganini had not left a cent to pay for his funeral or his
+hotel-bill, the Genoese, his proverbial meanness notwithstanding,
+settled the hotel-bill and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.
+
+He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of the Stradivarius--as
+a momento of the strange event.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_There is no Religion Higher than Truth_
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+THE
+
+UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD
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+
+                     *       *
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+THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, founded by H.�P.
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+
+
+
+
+The International Brotherhood League
+
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+
+  =Nightmare Tales= (H.�P. Blavatsky). _Illustrated by R.
+    Machell, R.�A._ A collection of the weirdest tales ever
+    written down by any mortal. They contain paragraphs of
+    the profoundest mystical philosophy.
+    Cloth                                                  .60
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+
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+
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+    pages; cloth. Postage prepaid                       $10.00
+    To be reprinted from the original edition of 1888, as
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+
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+    Bhagavad Gita--Co-Heirs with Christ--Jesus the Man (the
+    only known personal description)
+
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+    History--The Man Born Blind--Man's Divinity and
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+    the Lord
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+
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following corrections have been made, on page
+
+7 "situa-ation" changed to "situation" (a clearer comprehension of the
+situation)
+
+13 " added (perish in the Ocean of M�y�.")
+
+14 "sanctury" changed to "sanctuary" (had only peeped into the
+sanctuary)
+
+16 "sancity" changed to "sanctity" (purity and sanctity of their lives)
+
+67 "proceded" changed to "proceeded" (I proceeded without delay)
+
+68 "wierdness" changed to "weirdness" (are heard in all their weirdness)
+
+72 "unaccoutably" changed to "unaccountably" (had so unaccountably
+disappeared ten years before)
+
+97 "unforseen" changed to "unforeseen" (the premature and unforeseen
+formation)
+
+112 "unparalled" changed to "unparalleled" (The unparalleled artist
+arrived)
+
+133 "the the" changed to "the" (he carefully rosined the bow)
+
+142 "in in" changed to "in" (in many cases they permit).
+
+Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual and
+inconsistent spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
+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: Nightmare Tales
+
+Author: H. P. Blavatsky
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTMARE TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by eagkw, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="covernote">Note: The cover of this book was created by
+the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Some details were
+changed to improve readability in a mobile device. A more extensive
+transcriber’s note can be found at the end of this book.</p>
+
+<p class="ttl">NIGHTMARE TALES</p>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="130" height="93" alt="logo" />
+<div class="caption1">
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Aryan Theosophical Press</span><br />
+Point Loma, California</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<h1>Nightmare Tales</h1>
+
+<hr class="l3" />
+
+<p class="tp1"><i>By</i><br />
+
+<span class="wr">H. P. BLAVATSKY</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="l4" />
+
+<p class="tp2">
+The Aryan Theosophical Press<br />
+Point Loma, California,<br />
+U. S. A.<br />
+1907
+</p>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+
+<h2 class="cs"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+  <th>&nbsp;</th>
+  <th>PAGE</th>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="col1">A Bewitched Life</td>
+  <td class="col2"><a href="#A_BEWITCHED_LIFE">1</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="col1">The Cave of the Echoes</td>
+  <td class="col2"><a href="#THE_CAVE_OF_THE_ECHOES">65</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="col1">The Luminous Shield</td>
+  <td class="col2"><a href="#THE_LUMINOUS_SHIELD">81</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="col1">From the Polar Lands</td>
+  <td class="col2"><a href="#FROM_THE_POLAR_LANDS">95</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="col1">The Ensouled Violin</td>
+  <td class="col2"><a href="#THE_ENSOULED_VIOLIN">103</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter1">
+<img src="images/p001.jpg" width="261" height="162" alt="header" />
+</div>
+
+<h2 class="fst"><a name="A_BEWITCHED_LIFE" id="A_BEWITCHED_LIFE"></a>A BEWITCHED LIFE
+<br />
+<span class="stl">(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)</span></h2>
+
+
+<h3 class="fst">Introduction</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p001cap.jpg" width="124" height="225" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="upper">It</span> was a dark, chilly night in September,
+1884. A heavy gloom had descended
+over the streets of A——, a small town
+on the Rhine, and was hanging like a
+black funeral-pall over the dull
+factory burgh. The greater number
+of its inhabitants, wearied by their
+long day’s work, had hours before
+retired to stretch their tired limbs,
+and lay their aching heads upon
+their pillows. All was quiet in the
+large house; all was quiet in the
+deserted streets.</p>
+
+<p>I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but
+of pain and sickness, to which I had been confined
+for some days. So still was everything in the house,
+that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness seemed almost
+audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+as it rushed through my aching body, producing that
+monotonous singing so familiar to one who lends a
+watchful ear to silence. I had listened to it until, in my
+nervous imagination, it had grown into the sound of a
+distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ...
+when, suddenly changing its character, the ever growing
+“singing” merged into other and far more welcome
+sounds. It was the low, and at first scarce audible,
+whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
+strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus
+sounds a voice speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in
+one of those wondrously acoustic gorges of the snow-capped
+mountains, where the air is so pure that a word
+pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.
+Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence;
+of one, to me, owing to many mystic associations,
+most dear and holy; a voice familiar for long years and
+ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mental or physical
+suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
+consolation.</p>
+
+<p>“Courage,” it whispered in gentle, mellow tones.
+“Think of the days passed by you in sweet associations;
+of the great lessons received of Nature’s truths; of the
+many errors of men concerning these truths; and try to
+add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let
+the narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help
+to shorten the hours of suffering.... Give your attention.
+Look yonder before you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yonder” meant the clear, large windows of an empty
+house on the other side of the narrow street of the
+German town. They faced my own in almost a straight
+line across the street, and my bed faced the windows of
+my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed
+my gaze towards them, and what I saw made me for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+time being forget the agony of the pain that racked my
+swollen arm and rheumatical body.</p>
+
+<p>Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy,
+serpentine, whitish mist, that looked like the huge
+shadow of a gigantic boa slowly uncoiling its body.
+Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous light, soft
+and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected
+a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky—first from
+outside, then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw
+the mist elongating itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy
+bridge across the street from the bewitched windows to
+my own balcony, nay to my very own bed. As I continued
+gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite
+house itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by
+the empty rooms had changed into the interior of another
+smaller room, in what I knew to be a Swiss châlet—into
+a study, whose old, dark walls were covered from floor to
+ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquated
+folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the
+center stood a large old-fashioned table, littered over
+with manuscripts and writing materials. Before it, quill-pen
+in hand, sat an old man; a grim-looking, skeleton-like
+personage, with a face so thin, so pale, yellow and
+emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student’s
+lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high
+cheek-bones, as though they were carved out of ivory.</p>
+
+<p>As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising
+myself upon my pillows, the whole vision, châlet and
+study, desk, books and scribe, seemed to flicker and
+move. Once set in motion they approached nearer and
+nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge
+of clouds across the street, they floated through the
+closed windows into my room and finally seemed to
+settle beside my bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/p004.jpg" width="411" height="606" alt="" />
+<div class="caption">
+<p class="noi">“I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A
+BRIGHT COLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY
+A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALL VOICE OF THE QUILL.”</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Listen to what he thinks and is going to write”—said
+in soothing tones the same familiar, far off, and yet near
+voice. “Thus you will hear a narrative, the telling of
+which may help to shorten the long sleepless hours, and
+even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!”—it
+added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic
+formula.</p>
+
+<p>I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention
+on the solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but
+which did not see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen
+with which the old man was writing, suggested to
+my mind nothing more than a low whispered murmur
+of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear
+caught the indistinct words of a faint and distant voice,
+and I thought the figure before me, bending over its
+manuscript, was reading its tale aloud instead of writing
+it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my gaze
+at the old scribe’s face, I saw at a glance that his lips
+were compressed and motionless, and the voice too thin
+and shrill to be his voice. Stranger still, at every word
+traced by the feeble, aged hand, I noticed a light flashing
+from under his pen, a bright colored spark that became
+instantaneously a sound, or—what is the same thing—it
+seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed
+the small voice of the quill that I heard, though scribe
+and pen were at the time, perchance, hundreds of miles
+away from Germany. Such things will happen occasionally,
+especially at night, beneath whose starry shade,
+as Byron tells us, we</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... learn the language of another world ...<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>However it may be, the words uttered by the quill
+remained in my memory for days after. Nor had I any
+great difficulty in retaining them, for when I sat down to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+record the story, I found it, as usual, indelibly impressed
+on the astral tablets before my inner eye.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received
+it. I failed to learn the name of the unknown nocturnal
+writer. Nevertheless, though the reader may prefer to
+regard the whole story as one made up for the occasion,
+a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, prove
+none the less interesting.</p>
+
+
+<h3>I<br />
+
+The Stranger’s Story</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My</span> birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of
+Swiss cottages, hidden deep in a sunny nook, between
+two tumble-down glaciers and a peak covered with eternal
+snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, I returned—crippled
+mentally and physically—to die, if death
+would only have me. The pure invigorating air of
+my birth-place decided otherwise. I am still alive;
+perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts I
+have kept profoundly secret from all—a tale of horror
+I would rather hide than reveal. The reason for this
+unwillingness on my part is due to my early education,
+and to subsequent events that gave the lie to my most
+cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined
+to regard these events as providential: I, however, believe
+in no Providence, and yet am unable to attribute
+them to mere chance. I connect them as the ceaseless
+evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct
+causes, with one primary and fundamental cause, from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+which ensued all that followed. A feeble old man am
+I now, yet physical weakness has in no way impaired
+my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details
+of that terrible cause, which engendered such fatal
+results. It is these which furnish me with an additional
+proof of the actual existence of one whom I
+fain would regard—oh, that I could do so!—as a creature
+born of my fancy, the evanescent production of a
+feverish, horrid dream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving,
+that saintly and respected Being! It was
+that paragon of all the virtues who embittered my
+whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently
+out of the monotonous but secure groove of daily life,
+was the first to force upon me the certitude of a life
+hereafter, thus adding an additional horror to one
+already great enough.</p>
+
+<p>With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation,
+I must interrupt these recollections with a few
+words about myself. Oh how, if I could, would I obliterate
+that hated <em>Self</em>!</p>
+
+<p>Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered
+the whole world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire,
+J.&nbsp;J. Rousseau and D’Holbach, and educated in a German
+university, I grew up a thorough materialist, a confirmed
+atheist. I could never have even pictured to myself any
+beings—least of all a Being—above or even outside visible
+nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded
+everything that could not be brought under the strictest
+analysis of the physical senses as a mere chimera. A
+soul, I argued, even supposing man has one, must be
+material. According to Origen’s definition, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">incorporeus</i><a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—the
+epithet he gave to his God—signifies a substance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which,
+at best, we can form no definite idea. How then can
+that, of which our senses cannot enable us to obtain any
+clear knowledge, how can that make itself visible or
+produce any tangible manifestations?</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism
+with a feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the
+overtures made by certain priests with derision, often
+akin to anger. And indeed the latter feeling has never
+entirely abandoned me.</p>
+
+<p>Pascal, in the eighth Act of his “Thoughts,” confesses
+to a most complete incertitude upon the existence of God.
+Throughout my life, I too professed a complete certitude
+as to the non-existence of any such extra-cosmic being,
+and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
+words in which he tells us: “I have examined if this
+God of whom all the world speaks might not have left
+some marks of himself. I look everywhere, and everywhere
+I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me
+nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude.”
+Nor have I found to this day anything that
+might unsettle me in precisely similar and even stronger
+feelings. I have never believed, nor shall I ever believe,
+in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
+proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed
+in some persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them
+I laugh no more. My whole broken life is a protest
+against such negation. I believe in such phenomena,
+and—I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoever
+means generated.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate
+lawsuit, I lost the greater part of my fortune, and resolved—for
+the sake of those I loved best, rather than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+for my own—to make another for myself. My elder
+sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I
+accepted the offer of a rich Hamburg firm and sailed
+for Japan as its junior partner.</p>
+
+<p>For several years my business went on successfully.
+I got into the confidence of many influential Japanese,
+through whose protection I was enabled to travel and
+transact business in many localities, which, in those
+days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
+Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the
+philosophy of Buddhism, the only religious system I
+thought worthy of being called philosophical. Thus, in
+my moments of leisure, I visited the most remarkable
+temples of Japan, the most important and curious of the
+ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined
+in turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell;
+Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero, Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi,
+and many other famous temples.</p>
+
+<p>Several years passed away, and during that whole
+period I was not cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever
+contemplate having my opinions on this subject altered.
+I derided the pretentions of the Japanese bonzes and
+ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
+Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition
+of powers unknown to, and never studied by, men of
+science; hence I scoffed at all such ideas. The superstitious
+and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shun
+the pleasures of life, to put to rout one’s passions, to
+render oneself insensible alike to happiness and suffering,
+in order to acquire such chimerical powers—seemed
+supremely ridiculous in my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>On a day for ever memorable to me—a fatal day—I
+made the acquaintance of a venerable and learned Bonze,
+a Japanese priest, named Tamoora Hideyeri. I met him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from that
+moment he became my best and most trusted friend.
+Notwithstanding my great and genuine regard for him,
+however, whenever a good opportunity was offered I
+never failed to mock his religious convictions, thereby
+very often hurting his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any
+true Buddhist’s heart might desire. He never resented
+my impatient sarcasms, even when they were, to say the
+least, of equivocal propriety, and generally limited his
+replies to the “wait and see” kind of protest. Nor could
+he be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my
+denial of the existence of any God or Gods. The full
+meaning of the terms “atheism” and “scepticism” was
+beyond the comprehension of his otherwise extremely
+intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverential
+Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any
+man of sense should prefer the wise conclusions arrived
+at by philosophy and modern science to a ridiculous
+belief in an invisible world full of Gods and spirits, dzins
+and demons. “Man is a spiritual being,” he insisted,
+“who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded
+or punished in the between times.” The proposition
+that man is nothing else but a heap of organized dust,
+was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused to
+admit that he was no better than “a stalking machine, a
+speaking head without a soul in it,” whose “thoughts
+are all bound by the laws of motion.” “For,” he argued,
+“if my actions were, as you say, prescribed beforehand,
+and I had no more liberty or free will to change the
+course of my action than the running waters of the river
+yonder, then the glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit
+and demerit, would be foolishness indeed.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+ontology rested on the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis,
+of a fancied “just” Law of Retribution, and
+other such equally absurd dreams.</p>
+
+<p>“We cannot,” said he paradoxically one day, “hope to
+live hereafter in the full enjoyment of our consciousness,
+unless we have built for it beforehand a firm and solid
+foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laugh not, friend
+of no faith,” he meekly pleaded, “but rather think and
+reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to
+live in Spirit during his conscious and responsible life
+on earth, can hardly hope to enjoy a sentient existence
+after death, when, deprived of his body, he is limited to
+that Spirit alone.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can you mean by life in Spirit?”—I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists
+call <i lang="pi" xml:lang="pi">Tushita Devaloka</i> (Paradise). Man can create such
+a blissful existence for himself between two births, by
+the gradual transference on to that plane of all the
+faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
+through his organic body and, as you call it, animal
+brain.”...</p>
+
+<p>“How absurd! And how can man do this?”</p>
+
+<p>“Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the
+blessed Gods, will enable him to do so.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by
+which you mean, I suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the
+tip of his nose, what becomes of him after the death of
+his body?” was my mocking question.</p>
+
+<p>“He will be dealt with according to the prevailing
+state of his consciousness, of which there are many
+grades. At best—immediate rebirth; at worst—the state
+of <i lang="pi" xml:lang="pi">avitchi</i>, a mental hell. Yet one need not be an ascetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to the
+hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach
+Spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>“How so? Even when disbelieving in it?”—I rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>“Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in
+one’s nature room for doubt, however small that room
+may be, and thus try one day, were it but for one
+moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this
+will prove sufficient for the purpose.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot,
+reverend sir. Will you kindly explain to me a little
+more of the mystery?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a
+moment that some unknown temple to which you have
+never been before, and the existence of which you think
+you have reasons to deny, is the ‘spiritual plane’ of
+which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand
+and leads you towards its entrance, curiosity makes you
+open its door and look within. By this simple act, by
+entering it for one second, you have established an everlasting
+connexion between your consciousness and the
+temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor
+obliterate the fact of your having entered it. And according
+to the character and the variety of your work,
+within its holy precincts, so will you live in it after your
+consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean? And what has my after-death
+consciousness—if such a thing exists—to do with the
+temple?”</p>
+
+<p>“It has everything to do with it,” solemnly rejoined
+the old man. “There can be no self-consciousness after
+death outside the temple of spirit. That which you will
+have done within its plane will alone survive. All the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish in
+the Ocean of Mâyâ.”</p>
+
+<p>Amused at the idea of living outside one’s body, I
+urged on my old friend to tell me more. Mistaking my
+meaning, the venerable man willingly consented.</p>
+
+<p>Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of
+Tzi-Onene, a Buddhist monastery, famous not only in
+all Japan, but also throughout Tibet and China. No
+other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the
+sect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned
+among the many erudite fraternities. They are, moreover,
+closely connected and allied with the Yamabooshi
+(the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the doctrines of
+Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
+my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics,
+hoping thereby to cure me of my infidelity.</p>
+
+<p>No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the
+most hopelessly involved and incomprehensible of all
+doctrines. According to his ideas, we have to train
+ourselves for spirituality in another world—as for gymnastics.
+Carrying on the analogy between the temple
+and the “spiritual plane” he tried to illustrate his idea.
+He had himself worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds
+of his life, and given several hours daily to
+“contemplation.” Thus <em>he knew</em> (?!) that after he had
+laid aside his mortal casket, “a mere illusion,” he explained—he
+would in his spiritual consciousness live
+over again every feeling of ennobling joy and divine
+bliss he had ever had, or <em>ought to have had</em>—only a
+hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane
+had been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore,
+that the wages of the laborer would prove proportionate.</p>
+
+<p>“But suppose the laborer, as in the example you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+have just brought forward in my case, should have no
+more than opened the temple door out of mere curiosity;
+had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his foot
+therein again. What then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” he answered, “you would have only this
+short minute to record in your future self-consciousness
+and no more. Our life hereafter records and repeats
+but the impressions and feelings we have had in our
+spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead
+of reverence at the moment of entering the abode of
+Spirit, you had been harboring in your heart anger,
+jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual life would be
+a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record,
+save the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper.”</p>
+
+<p>“How then could it be repeated?”—I insisted, highly
+amused. “What do you suppose I would be doing
+before incarnating again?”</p>
+
+<p>“In that case,” he said, speaking slowly and weighing
+every word—“in that case, <em>you would have, I fear, only to
+open and shut the temple door, over and over again, during
+a period which, however short, would seem to you an
+eternity</em>.”</p>
+
+<p>This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me,
+at that time, so grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I
+was seized with an almost inextinguishable fit of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at
+such a result of his metaphysical instruction. He had
+evidently not expected such hilarity. However, he said
+nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me with increased
+benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Pray excuse my laughter,” I apologized. “But
+really, now, you cannot seriously mean to tell me that
+the ‘spiritual state’ you advocate and so firmly believe
+in, consists only in aping certain things we do in life?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their
+repetition; filling the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled
+during life in the fruition of our acts and deeds,
+and of everything performed on the spiritual plane of
+the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and
+no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the
+mysteries of <em>Soul-Vision</em>, not a very intelligible one. It
+is myself who am to be blamed.... What I sought
+to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual state of
+our consciousness liberated from its body is but the
+fruition of every spiritual act performed during life,
+where an act had been barren, there could be no results
+expected—save the repetition of that act itself. This is
+all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds and
+finally made to see certain truths.” And passing through
+the usual Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent
+man departed.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have
+learned since, how little would I have laughed, and how
+much more would I have learned!</p>
+
+<p>But as the matter stood, the more personal affection
+and respect I felt for him, the less could I become reconciled
+to his wild ideas about an after-life, and especially
+as to the acquisition by some men of supernatural powers.
+I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence for the
+Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the
+land. Their claims to the “miraculous” were simply
+odious to my notions. To hear every Jap I knew at
+Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest of all the
+business men I had come across in the East—mentioning
+these followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes,
+reverentially folded hands, and affirmations of their possessing
+“great” and “wonderful” gifts, was more than
+I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+who were they, after all, these great magicians with
+their ridiculous pretensions to super-mundane knowledge;
+these “holy beggars” who, as I then thought,
+purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains
+and on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the
+better to afford no chance to curious intruders of finding
+them out and watching them in their own dens?
+Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies who
+sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to
+those who sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi
+lead a mysterious life, admitting none of the
+profane to their secrets, they still do accept pupils, however
+difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and
+that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity
+and sanctity of their lives, in answer to such affirmations
+I opposed the strongest negation and stood firmly by it.
+I insulted both masters and pupils, classing them under
+the same category of fools, when not knaves, and I went
+so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now
+Sintoism or <i lang="ja" xml:lang="ja">Sin-Syu</i>, “faith in the Gods, and in the way
+to the Gods,” that is, belief in the communication between
+these creatures and men, is a kind of worship of
+nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more miserably
+absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and
+knaves of other sects, I gained many enemies. For the
+Sinto Kanusi (spiritual teachers) are looked upon as the
+highest in the upper classes of Society, the Mikado himself
+being at the head of their hierarchy and the members
+of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated
+men in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no
+caste or class apart, nor do they pass any ordination—at
+any rate none known to outsiders. And as they claim
+publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress
+being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+simply in the world’s opinion professors and students of
+occult and spiritual sciences, I very often came in contact
+with them without in the least suspecting that I was in
+the presence of such personages.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <span title="asômatos">ἀσώματος</span>.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>II<br />
+
+The Mysterious Visitor</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Years</span> passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable
+scepticism grew stronger and waxed fiercer every day.
+I have already mentioned an elder and much-beloved
+sister, my only surviving relative. She had married
+and had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded
+her with feelings more filial than fraternal, and her
+children were as dear to me as might have been my
+own. At the time of the great catastrophe that in the
+course of a few days had made my father lose his large
+fortune, and my mother break her heart, she it was,
+that sweet big sister of mine, who had made herself of
+her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined family.
+Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for
+whom she attempted to replace the professors that could
+no longer be afforded, she had renounced her own happiness.
+She sacrificed herself and the man she loved,
+by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to
+help our father and chiefly myself by her undivided
+devotion. And, oh, how I loved and reverenced her,
+time but strengthening this earliest family affection!
+They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a
+true friend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+utter—whether consciously or unconsciously—the greatest
+calumny and lie. To say that a materialist grows
+hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot love as
+a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.</p>
+
+<p>There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but
+these are found only occasionally in men who are even
+more selfish than they are sceptical, or vulgarly worldly.
+But when a man who is kindly disposed in his nature,
+for no selfish motives but because of reason and love of
+truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only
+strengthened in his family affections, and in his sympathies
+with his fellow men. All his emotions, all the
+ardent aspirations towards the unseen and unreachable,
+all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly bestowed
+on a suppositional heaven and its God, become
+now centered with tenfold force upon his loved ones and
+mankind. Indeed, the atheist’s heart alone—</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="in1">... can know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What secret tides of still enjoyment flow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When brothers love....<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to
+sacrifice my comfort and personal welfare to secure her
+happiness, the felicity of her who had been more than a
+mother to me. I was a mere youth when I left home for
+Hamburg. There, working with all the desperate earnestness
+of a man who has but one noble object in view—to
+relieve suffering, and help those whom he loves—I
+very soon secured the confidence of my employers,
+who raised me in consequence to the high post of trust
+I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward in
+life was to see my sister married to the man she had
+sacrificed for my sake, and to help them in their struggle
+for existence. So purifying and unselfish was this affection
+of mine for her that when it came to be shared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+among her children, instead of losing in intensity by
+such division, it seemed only to grow the stronger.
+Born with the potentiality of the warmest family affection
+in me, the devotion for my sister was so great, that
+the thought of burning that sacred fire of love before
+any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered
+my head. This was the only church I recognized, the
+only church wherein I worshipped at the altar of holy
+family affection. In fact this large family of eleven
+persons, including her husband, was the only tie that
+attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine
+years, had I crossed the ocean with the sole object of
+seeing and pressing these dear ones to my heart. I had
+no other business in the West; and having performed
+this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to
+work and toil for them. For their sake I remained a
+bachelor, that the wealth I might acquire should go undivided
+to them alone.</p>
+
+<p>We had always corresponded as regularly as the long
+transit of the then very irregular service of the mail-boats
+would permit. But suddenly there came a break
+in my letters from home. For nearly a year I received
+no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless,
+more apprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I
+looked for a letter, a simple message; and my efforts to
+account for so unusual a silence were fruitless.</p>
+
+<p>“Friend,” said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my
+only confidant, “Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and
+you will feel at rest.”</p>
+
+<p>Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation
+as I could command under the provocation. But,
+as steamer after steamer came in without a word of news,
+I felt a despair which daily increased in depth and fixity.
+This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+morbid desire to learn—the worst as I then thought. I
+struggled hard with the feeling, but it had the best of
+me. Only a few months before a complete master of
+myself—I now became an abject slave to fear. A fatalist
+of the school of D’Holbach, I, who had always
+regarded belief in the system of necessity as being the
+only promoter of philosophical happiness, and as having
+the most advantageous influence over human weaknesses,
+<em>I</em> felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!
+I had gone so far as to forget the first principle
+of my doctrine—the only one calculated to calm our
+sorrows, to inspire us with a useful submission, namely
+a rational resignation to the decrees of blind destiny,
+with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be
+overwhelmed—the doctrine that <em>all is necessary</em>. Yes;
+forgetting this, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious
+longing, a stupid, disgraceful desire to learn—if not futurity,
+at any rate that which was taking place at the other
+side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterly modified,
+my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and
+like a weak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my
+mind to the very verge of lunacy in an attempt to look—as
+I had been told one could sometimes do—beyond
+the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,
+inexplicable silence!</p>
+
+<p>One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable
+Bonze, Tamoora, appeared on the verandah of my low
+wooden house. I had not visited him for many days,
+and he had come to know how I was. I took the opportunity
+to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I
+regarded with most affectionate respect. With equivocal
+taste—for which I repented almost before the words had
+been pronounced—I inquired of him why he had taken
+the trouble to walk all that distance when he might have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogating
+a Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first;
+but after keenly scrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly
+remarked that he could only insist upon what he had
+advised before. Only one of that holy order could give
+me consolation in my present state.</p>
+
+<p>From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to
+challenge him to prove his assertions. I defied—I said
+to him—any and every one of his alleged magicians to
+tell me the name of the person I was thinking of, and
+what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered
+that my desire could be easily satisfied. There was a
+Yamabooshi two doors from me, visiting a sick Sinto.
+He would fetch him—if I only said the word.</p>
+
+<p>I said it and <em>from the moment of its utterance my doom
+was sealed</em>.</p>
+
+<p>How shall I find words to describe the scene that
+followed! Twenty minutes after the desire had been so
+incautiously expressed, an old Japanese, uncommonly
+tall and majestic for one of that race, pale, thin and
+emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I had
+expected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned
+an air of calm and dignified composure, the attitude of
+one who knows his moral superiority, and therefore
+scorns to notice the mistakes of those who fail to recognize
+it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,
+which I put to him one after another, with feverish
+eagerness, he made no reply; but gazed on me in silence
+as a physician would look at a delirious patient. From
+the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt—or shall I
+say, saw—as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin
+silvery thread, shoot out from the intensely black and
+narrow eyes so deeply sunk in the yellow old face. It
+seemed to penetrate into my brain and heart like an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom every
+thought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and
+very soon the double sensation became intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>To break the spell I defied him to tell me what he
+had found in my thoughts. Calmly came the correct
+answer—Extreme anxiety for a female relative, her husband
+and children, who were inhabiting a house the
+correct description of which he gave as though he knew
+it as well as myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my
+friend, the Bonze, to whose indiscretions, I thought, I
+was indebted for the quick reply. Remembering however
+that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearance
+of my sister’s house, that the Japanese are proverbially
+truthful and, as friends, faithful to death—I
+felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atone for it before
+my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could
+tell me anything of the present state of that beloved
+sister of mine. The foreigner—was the reply—would
+never believe in the words, or trust to the knowledge of
+any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell
+him, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours
+later, and the inquirer find himself as miserable as before.
+There was but one means; and that was to make
+the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and thus
+learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to
+be placed by a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the
+required state?</p>
+
+<p>I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules
+and pretenders to clairvoyance, and having no faith in
+them, I had, therefore, nothing against the process itself.
+Even in the midst of my never-ceasing mental agony,
+I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the
+operation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I
+silently bowed consent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>III<br />
+
+Psychic Magic</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the
+setting sun, and finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio
+(the Spirit who darts his Rays) propitious for
+the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a little
+bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of
+vegetable paper, made from the bark of the mulberry
+tree, and a pen, with which he traced upon the paper a
+few sentences in the <i lang="und" xml:lang="und">Naiden</i> character—a peculiar style
+of written language used only for religious and mystical
+purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his
+clothes a small round mirror of steel of extraordinary
+brilliancy, and placing it before my eyes, asked me to
+look into it.</p>
+
+<p>I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which
+are frequently used in the temples, but I had often seen
+them. It is claimed that under the direction and will of
+instructed priests, there appear in them the Daij-Dzin,
+the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of
+their fate. I first imagined that his intention was to
+evoke such a spirit, who would answer my queries.
+What happened, however, was something of quite a
+different character.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental
+squeamishness, produced by a deep sense of my own
+absurd position, touched the mirror, than I suddenly
+felt a strange sensation in the arm of the hand that held
+it. For a brief moment I forgot to “sit in the seat of the
+scorner” and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+point of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my
+brain, for an instant paralyzing its activity—</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="in2">... that fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on
+persuading myself that nothing would come out of an
+experiment, in the nature of which no sane man could
+ever believe. What was it then, that crept across my
+brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein a
+sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if
+a deadly serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a
+convulsive jerk of the hand I dropped the—I blush to
+write the adjective—“magic” mirror, and could not
+force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I
+was reclining. For one short moment there was a
+terrible struggle between some undefined, and to me
+utterly inexplicable, longing to look into the depths of
+the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, the
+ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It
+was finally so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered
+by its own defiant intensity. There was an opened novel
+lying on a lacquer table near the settee, and as my eyes
+happened to fall upon its pages, I read the words, “The
+veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of
+mercy.” This was enough. That same pride which
+had hitherto held me back from what I regarded as a
+degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me to challenge
+my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk
+and prepared to look into it.</p>
+
+<p>While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi
+hastily spoke a few words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at
+which I threw a furtive and suspicious glance at both.
+I was wrong once more.</p>
+
+<p>“The holy man desires me to put you a question and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+give you at the same time a warning,” remarked the
+Bonze. “If you are willing to see for yourself now, you
+will have—under the penalty of <em>seeing for ever, in the
+hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, and
+that against your will or inclination</em>—to submit to a
+regular course of purification, after you have learned
+what you want through the mirror.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is this course, and what have I to promise?”
+I asked defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>“It is for your own good. You must promise him to
+submit to the process, lest, for the rest of his life, he
+should have to hold himself responsible, before his own
+conscience, for having made an <em>irresponsible</em> seer of you.
+Will you do so, friend?”</p>
+
+<p>“There will be time enough to think of it, if I see
+anything”—I sneeringly replied, adding under my
+breath—“something I doubt a good deal, so far.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences
+will now remain with yourself,” was the solemn answer.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience,
+which was remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi.
+It was just <em>seven minutes after five</em>.</p>
+
+<p>“Define well in your mind <em>what</em> you would see and
+learn,” said the “conjuror,” placing the mirror and
+paper in my hands, and instructing me how to use them.</p>
+
+<p>His instructions were received by me with more impatience
+than gratitude; and for one short instant, I
+hesitated again. Nevertheless I replied, while fixing the
+mirror:</p>
+
+<p>“<em>I desire but one thing—to learn the reason or reasons
+why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me.</em>”...</p>
+
+<p>Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+hearing of the two witnesses, or had I only thought
+them? To this day I cannot decide the point. I now
+remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
+the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But
+whether this process lasted half a second or three hours,
+I have never since been able to settle in my mind with
+any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every detail of
+the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror
+with the left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the
+mystic characters between the thumb and finger of the
+right, when all of a sudden I seemed to quite lose consciousness
+of the surrounding objects. The passage
+from the active waking state to one that I could compare
+with nothing I had ever experienced before, was so
+rapid, that while my eyes had ceased to perceive external
+objects and had completely lost sight of the Bonze, the
+Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless
+distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat
+leaning forward with the mirror in my hand. Then
+came a strong sensation of an involuntary rush forward,
+of <em>snapping</em> off, so to say, from my place—I had almost
+said from my body. And, then, while every one of my
+other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I
+thought, unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more
+vivid glimpse than they had ever had in reality, of my
+sister’s new house at Nuremberg, which I had never
+visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery
+with which I had never been very familiar. Together
+with this, and while feeling in my brain what seemed like
+flashes of a departing consciousness—dying persons must
+feel so, no doubt—the very last, vague thought, so weak
+as to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look
+very, <em>very</em> ridiculous.... This <em>feeling</em>—for such it
+was rather than a thought—was interrupted, suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+extinguished, so to say, by a clear <em>mental vision</em> (I cannot
+characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which I
+regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy
+cheeks on the settee, dead to all intents and purposes,
+but still staring with the cold and glassy eyes of a corpse
+into the mirror. Bending over it, with his two emaciated
+hands cutting the air in every direction over <em>its</em> white
+face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I
+felt at that instant an inextinguishable, murderous
+hatred. As I was going, in thought, to pounce upon the
+vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old men, the room
+itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a
+reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away
+from “me.” A few more grotesque, distorted shadows
+before “my” sight; and, with a last feeling of terror and
+a supreme effort to realise <em>who then was I now, since I was
+not that corpse</em>—a great veil of darkness fell over me, like
+a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV<br />
+
+A Vision of Horror</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">How</span> strange!... Where was I now? It was
+evident to me that I had once more returned to my
+senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that I was
+rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer,
+strange sensation as though I were swimming, without
+impulse or effort on my part, and in total darkness.
+The idea that first presented itself to me was that of a
+long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and stifling
+air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+the presence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter
+a few words, to repeat my last sentence, “I desire but
+one thing: to learn the reason or reasons why my sister
+has so suddenly ceased writing to me”—but the only
+words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, “<em>to
+learn</em>,” and these, instead of their coming out of my own
+larynx, came back to me in my own voice, but entirely
+outside myself, near, but not in me. In short, they were
+pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....</p>
+
+<p>One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge
+into the Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown
+element, and I saw myself standing—actually standing—underground,
+as it seemed. I was compactly and
+thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right
+and left, with earth, and <em>in</em> the mould, and yet it
+weighed not, and seemed quite immaterial and transparent
+to <em>my senses</em>. I did not realize for one second the
+utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that <em>seeming</em> fact!
+One second more, one short instant, and I perceived—oh,
+inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for
+then, although I perceived, realized, and recorded facts
+and events far more clearly than ever I had done before,
+I did not seem to be touched in any other way by what
+I saw. Yes—I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a
+plain unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch
+of the pauper, in which, notwithstanding its closed lid,
+I plainly saw a hideous, grinning skull, a man’s skeleton,
+mutilated and broken in many of its parts, as though it
+had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the
+defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to
+torture. “Who can it be?”—I thought.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar
+the same voice—<em>my</em> voice ... “<em>the reason or reasons
+why</em>” ... it said; as though these words were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which it
+had just repeated the two words “to learn.” It sounded
+near, and yet as from some incalculable distance; giving
+me then the idea that the long subterranean journey,
+the subsequent mental reflexions and discoveries, had
+occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
+almost instantaneous interval between the first and the
+middle words of the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not
+actually pronounced by myself in my room at Kioto,
+and which it was now finishing, in interrupted, broken
+phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and
+voice....</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming
+a form, and to me, but too familiar appearance.
+The broken parts joined together one to the other, the
+bones became covered once more with flesh, and I recognized
+in these disfigured remains—with some surprise,
+but not a trace of feeling at the sight—my sister’s dead
+husband, my own brother-in-law, whom I had for her
+sake loved so truly. “How was it, and how did he come
+to die such a terrible death?”—I asked myself. To put
+oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to
+instantly solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question,
+when, as if in a panorama, I saw the retrospective
+picture of poor Karl’s death, in all its horrid vividness,
+and with every thrilling detail, every one of which, however,
+left me then entirely and brutally indifferent.
+Here he is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at
+the prospect of more lucrative employment from his
+principal, examining and trying in a wood-sawing factory
+a monster steam engine just arrived from America.
+He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement,
+to tighten a screw. His clothes are caught
+by the teeth of the revolving wheel in full motion, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his limbs
+half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted
+with the mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or
+what remains of him, dead, mangled, a thing of horror,
+an unrecognizable mass of palpitating flesh and blood!
+I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap
+to the hospital, hear the brutally given order that the
+messengers of death should stop on their way at the
+house of the widow and orphans. I follow them, and
+find the unconscious family quietly assembled together.
+I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferent
+at the sight, only feeling highly interested in
+the coming scene. My heart, my feelings, even my personality,
+seemed to have disappeared, to have been left
+behind, to belong to somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>There “I” stand, and witness her unprepared reception
+of the ghastly news. I realize clearly, without one
+moment’s hesitation or mistake, the effect of the shock
+upon her, I perceive clearly, following and recording, to
+the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner process
+that takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing
+not one single point.</p>
+
+<p>As the corpse is brought into the house for identification
+I hear the long agonizing cry, my own name
+pronounced, and the dull thud of the living body
+falling upon the remains of the dead one. I follow with
+curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous
+perturbation in her brain that follow it, and watch with
+attention the worm-like, precipitate, and immensely
+intensified motion of the tubular fibers, the instantaneous
+change of color in the cephalic extremity of the nervous
+system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to
+bright red and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice
+the sudden flash of a phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+its tremor and its sudden extinction followed by darkness—complete
+darkness in the region of memory—as
+the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human
+shape, oozes out suddenly from the top of the head,
+expands, loses its form and scatters. And I say to
+myself: “This is insanity; life-long, incurable insanity,
+for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed or
+extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the
+tabernacle for ever, ejected from it by the terrible force
+of the sudden blow.... The link between the
+animal and the divine essence is broken.”...
+And as the unfamiliar term “divine” is mentally uttered
+<em>my</em> “<strong class="smcap">Thought</strong>”—laughs.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing
+emphatically and close by me the words ...
+“<em>why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing</em>.”...
+And before the two final words “<em>to me</em>” have completed
+the sentence, I see a long series of sad events, immediately
+following the catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot,
+in the lunatic asylum attached to the city hospital, the
+seven younger children admitted into a refuge for
+paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy of fifteen,
+and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
+strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing
+vessel carries away my nephew, an old Jewess adopts
+the tender girl. I see the events with all their horrors
+and thrilling details, and record each, to the smallest
+detail, with the utmost coolness.</p>
+
+<p>For, mark well: when I use such expressions as
+“horrors,” etc., they are to be understood as an after-thought.
+During the whole time of the events described
+I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My
+feelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+senses; it was only after “coming back” that I realized
+my irretrievable losses to their full extent.</p>
+
+<p>Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in
+those days, owing to sad personal experience I have to
+admit now. Had I been told by anyone at that time,
+that man could act and think and feel, irrespective of
+his brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and
+to this day, for me, incomprehensible power, <em>he</em> could be
+transported <em>mentally</em>, thousands of miles away from his
+body, there to witness not only present but also past
+events, and remember these by storing them in his
+memory—I would have proclaimed that man a madman.
+Alas, I can do so no longer, for I have become myself
+that “madman.” Ten, twenty, forty, a hundred times
+during the course of this wretched life of mine, have I
+experienced and lived over such moments of existence,
+<em>outside of my body</em>. Accursed be that hour when this
+terrible power was first awakened in me! I have not
+even the consolation left of attributing such glimpses of
+events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see
+that which exists not in the realm they belong to. My
+visions have proved <em>invariably correct</em>. But to my
+narrative of woe.</p>
+
+<p>I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young
+niece in her new Israelitish home, when I felt a shock
+of the same nature as the one that had sent me “swimming”
+through the bowels of the earth, as I had thought.
+I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I
+fixed upon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the
+dial showed seven minutes and a half past five!... I
+had thus passed through these most terrible experiences,
+which it takes me hours to narrate, <em>in precisely half a
+minute of time</em>!</p>
+
+<p>But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+instant I recollected nothing of what I had seen. The
+interval between the time I had glanced at the clock
+when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi’s hand
+and this second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I
+was just opening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi
+with his experiment, when the full remembrance of what
+I had just seen flashed lightning-like into my brain.
+Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as though
+the whole creation were crushing me under its weight.
+For one moment I remained speechless, the picture of
+human ruin amid a world of death and desolation. My
+heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; and
+a hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my
+life for ever.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V<br />
+
+Return of Doubts</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Then</span> came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A
+doubt arose in my mind, which forthwith grew into a
+fierce desire of denying the truth of what I had seen. A
+stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as an
+empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained
+mind, took possession of me. Yes; it was but a lying
+vision, an idiotic cheating of my own senses, suggesting
+pictures of death and misery which had been evoked by
+weeks of incertitude and mental depression.</p>
+
+<p>“How could I see all that I have seen in less than half
+a minute?”—I exclaimed. “The theory of dreams, the
+rapidity with which the material changes on which our
+ideas in vision depend, are excited in the hemispherical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+ganglia, is sufficient to account for the long series of
+events I have seemed to experience. In dream alone
+can the relations of space and time be so completely
+annihilated. The Yamabooshi is for nothing in this
+disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that which
+has been sown by myself, and, by using some infernal
+drug, of which his tribe have the secret, he has contrived
+to make me lose consciousness for a few seconds
+and see that vision—as lying as it is horrid. Avaunt all
+such thoughts, I believe them not. In a few days there
+will be a steamer sailing for Europe.... I shall leave
+to-morrow!”</p>
+
+<p>This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me
+aloud, regardless of the presence of my respected friend
+the Bonze, Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi. The latter
+was standing before me in the same position as when he
+placed the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at me
+calmly, I should perhaps say looking <em>through</em> me, and in
+dignified silence. The Bonze, whose kind countenance
+was beaming with sympathy, approached me as he would
+a sick child, and gently laying his hand on mine, and
+with tears in his eyes, said: “Friend, you must not
+leave this city before you have been completely purified
+of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins (spirits), who
+had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the
+places it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner
+Self must be closed against their dangerous intrusion.
+Lose no time, therefore, my son, and allow the holy
+Master yonder, to purify you at once.”</p>
+
+<p>But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused.
+“The sap of reason” could no longer “quench the fire
+of passion,” and at that moment I was not fit to listen to
+his friendly voice. His is a face I can never recall to
+my memory without genuine feeling; his, a name I will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that
+ever memorable hour when my passions were inflamed
+to white heat, I felt almost a hatred for the kind, good
+old man, I could not forgive him his interference in the
+present event. Hence, for all answer, therefore, he
+received from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on my
+part against the idea that I could ever regard the vision
+I had had, in any other light save that of an empty
+dream, and his Yamabooshi as anything better than an
+impostor. “I will leave to-morrow, had I to forfeit my
+whole fortune as a penalty”—I exclaimed, pale with rage
+and despair.</p>
+
+<p>“You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so
+before the holy man has shut every entrance in you
+against intruders ever on the watch and ready to enter
+the open door,” was the answer. “The Daij-Dzins will
+have the best of you.”</p>
+
+<p>I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more
+brutally phrased inquiry about the <em>fees</em> I was expected
+to give the Yamabooshi, for his experiment with me.</p>
+
+<p>“He needs no reward,” was the reply. “The order he
+belongs to is the richest in the world, since its adherents
+need nothing, for they are above all terrestrial and venal
+desires. Insult him not, the good man who came to help
+you out of pure sympathy for your suffering, and to
+relieve you of mental agony.”</p>
+
+<p>But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom.
+The spirit of rebellion and pride had taken possession of
+me, and made me disregard every feeling of personal
+friendship, or even of simple propriety. Luckily for me,
+on turning round to order the mendicant monk out of my
+presence, I found he had gone.</p>
+
+<p>I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+departure to fear at having been detected and understood.</p>
+
+<p>Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I
+fail to recognize the Yamabooshi’s power, and that the
+peace of my whole life was departing with him, from
+that moment for ever? But I did so fail. Even the fell
+demon of my long fears—uncertainty—was now entirely
+overpowered by that fiend scepticism—the silliest of all.
+A dull, morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence
+of my own senses, and a determined will to regard the
+whole vision as a fancy of my overwrought mind, had
+taken firm hold of me.</p>
+
+<p>“My mind,” I argued, “what is it? Shall I believe
+with the superstitious and the weak that this production
+of phosphorus and gray matter is indeed the superior
+part of me; that it can act and see independently of my
+physical senses? Never! As well believe in the planetary
+‘intelligences’ of the astrologer, as in the ‘Daij-Dzins’
+of my credulous though well-meaning friend, the
+priest. As well confess one’s belief in Jupiter and Sol,
+Saturn and Mercury, and that these worthies guide their
+spheres and concern themselves with mortals, as to give
+one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to
+have guided my ‘soul’ in its unpleasant dream! I loathe
+and laugh at the absurd idea. I regard it as a personal
+insult to the intellect and rational reasoning powers of
+a man, to speak of invisible creatures, ‘<em>subjective</em> intelligences,’
+and all that kind of insane superstition.” In
+short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his
+protests, and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with
+him for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese
+gentleman, doing all in my power to leave on his mind
+the indelible conviction of my having gone suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+mad. But his admirable forbearance proved more than
+equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once
+more, for the sake of my whole future, to submit to
+certain “necessary purificatory rites.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing
+by the air-pump of wholesome unbelief, than in the dim
+fog of silly superstition,” I argued, paraphrazing Richter’s
+remark. “I will not believe,” I repeated; “but as I can
+no longer bear such uncertainty about my sister and her
+family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>This final determination upset my old acquaintance
+altogether. His earnest prayer not to depart before I
+had seen the Yamabooshi once more, received no attention
+from me.</p>
+
+<p>“Friend of a foreign land!”—he cried, “I pray that
+you may not repent of your unbelief and rashness. May
+the ‘Holy One’ (Kwan-On, the Goddess of Mercy) protect
+you from the Dzins! For, since you refuse to
+submit to the process of purification at the hands of the
+holy Yamabooshi, he is powerless to defend you from the
+evil influences evoked by your unbelief and defiance of
+truth. But let me, at this parting hour, I beseech you,
+let me, an older man who wishes you well, warn
+you once more and persuade you of things you are still
+ignorant of. May I speak?”</p>
+
+<p>“Go on and have your say,” was the ungracious assent.
+“But let me warn you, in my turn, that nothing you can
+say can make of me a believer in your disgraceful superstitions.”
+This was added with a cruel feeling of pleasure
+in bestowing one more needless insult.</p>
+
+<p>But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as
+he had all others. Never shall I forget the solemn
+earnestness of his parting words, the pitying, remorseful
+look on his face when he found that it was, indeed, all to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference he had
+only led me to my destruction.</p>
+
+<p>“Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time,” he
+began, “learn that unless the holy and venerable man,
+who, to relieve your distress, opened your ‘soul vision,’
+is permitted to complete his work, your future life will,
+indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguard you
+against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same
+character. Unless you consent to it of your own free
+will, however, you will have to be left in the power of
+<em>Forces</em> which will harass and persecute you to the verge
+of insanity. Know that the development of ‘Long
+Vision’ (clairvoyance)—which is accomplished <em>at will</em>
+only by those for whom the Mother of Mercy, the great
+Kwan-On, has no secrets—must, in the case of the
+beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins
+(elemental spirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence
+wicked. Know also that, while the Arihat, ‘the destroyer
+of the enemy,’ who has subjected and made of these
+creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he who has
+no power over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not
+in your great pride and ignorance, but listen further.
+During the time of the vision and while the inner
+perceptions are directed towards the events they seek, the
+Daij-Dzin has the seer—when, like yourself, he is an
+inexperienced tyro—entirely in its power; and for the
+time being <em>that seer is no longer himself</em>. He partakes of
+the nature of his ‘guide.’ The Daij-Dzin, which directs
+his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance vile, making of
+him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself. Bereft
+of his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence
+during the time of such connection, he will feel no human
+emotions, neither pity nor fear, love nor mercy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hold!” I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+vividly brought back to my recollection the indifference
+with which I had witnessed my sister’s despair and
+sudden loss of reason in my “hallucination.” “Hold!...
+But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed
+or find any sense in your ridiculous tale! But if you
+knew it to be so dangerous why have advised the
+experiment at all?”—I added mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>“It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could
+have resulted from it, had you kept your promise to
+submit to purification,” was the sad and humble reply.
+“I wished you well, my friend, and my heart was nigh
+breaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment
+is harmless when directed by <em>one who knows</em>, and
+becomes dangerous only when the final precaution is
+neglected. It is the ‘Master of Visions,’ he who has
+opened an entrance into your soul, who has to close it by
+using the Seal of Purification against any further and
+deliberate ingress of....”</p>
+
+<p>“The ‘Master of Visions,’ forsooth!” I cried, brutally
+interrupting him, “say rather the Master of Imposture!”</p>
+
+<p>The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense
+and painful to behold that I perceived I had gone too
+far; but it was too late.</p>
+
+<p>“Farewell, then!” said the old bonze, rising; and after
+performing the usual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora
+left the house in dignified silence.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI<br />
+
+I Depart—But Not Alone</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Several</span> days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw
+my venerable friend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on
+that last, and to me for ever memorable evening, he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+been seriously offended with my more than irreverent,
+my downright insulting remark about one whom he so
+justly respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of
+passion and pride was too incessantly at work to permit
+me to feel a single moment of remorse. What was it
+that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath, that when,
+for one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposed
+grievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed
+myself back into a kind of artificial fury against him.
+He had only accomplished what he had been expected
+to do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so,
+but it was I myself who had deprived him of the possibility
+of doing more, even for my own protection, if I
+might believe the Bonze—a man whom I knew to be
+thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at
+having been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered
+precaution, or was it the fear of remorse that made me
+rake together, in my heart, during those evil hours, the
+smallest details of the supposed insult to that same
+suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly
+remarked, “is like the heart in which it grows:...</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="in1">... if proud and gloomy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weeps only tears of blood.”<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of
+that sort which caused me to remain so obdurate, and
+led me to excuse, under the plea of terrible provocation,
+even the unprovoked insults that I had heaped upon the
+head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest.
+However, it was now too late in the day to recall the
+words of offence I had uttered; and all I could do was
+to promise myself the satisfaction of writing him a
+friendly letter, as soon as I reached home. Fool, blind
+fool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was! So<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+sure did I feel, that my vision was due merely to some
+trick of the Yamabooshi, that I actually gloated over my
+coming triumph in writing to the Bonze that I had been
+right in answering his sad words of parting with an
+incredulous smile, as my sister and family were all in
+good health—happy!</p>
+
+<p>I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to
+remember his words of warning!</p>
+
+<p>From the day of my experience with the magic mirror,
+I perceived a great change in my whole state, and I
+attributed it, at first, to the mental depression I had
+struggled against for so many months. During the day
+I very often found myself absent from the surrounding
+scenes, losing sight for several minutes of things and
+persons. My nights were disturbed, my dreams oppressive,
+and at times horrible. Good sailor I certainly was;
+and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the ocean
+as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt
+a strange giddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers
+assumed at such times the most grotesque
+appearances. Thus, a young German I used to know
+well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into
+his old father, whom we had laid in the little burial
+place of the European colony some three years before.
+We were talking on deck of the defunct and of a certain
+business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner’s head
+appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange
+film. A thick greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually
+condensing around and upon his healthy countenance,
+settled suddenly into the grim old head I had
+myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another
+occasion, as the captain was talking of a Malay thief
+whom he had helped to secure and lodge in jail, I saw
+near him the yellow, villainous face of a man answering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+to his description. I kept silence about such hallucinations;
+but as they became more and more frequent, I
+felt very much disturbed, though still attributing them to
+natural causes, such as I had read about in medical books.</p>
+
+<p>One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and
+loud cry of distress. It was a woman’s voice, plaintive
+like that of a child, full of terror and of helpless despair.
+I awoke with a start to find myself on land, in a strange
+room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperately
+struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who
+had surprised her in her own room, and during her sleep.
+Behind the closed and locked door, I saw listening an
+old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
+expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately
+recognized it: it was the face of the Jewess who
+had adopted my niece in the dream I had at Kioto. She
+had received gold to pay for her share in the foul crime,
+and was now keeping her part of the covenant....
+But who was the victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable
+horror! When I realized the situation after
+coming back to my normal state, I found it was my own
+child-niece.</p>
+
+<p>But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the
+nature of that despair born of affection that fills one’s
+heart, at the sight of a wrong done to, or a misfortune
+befalling, those one loves; nothing but a manly indignation
+in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the weak
+and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and
+seized the wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened
+upon him with powerful grasp, but, the man heeded it
+not, he seemed not even to feel my hand. The coward,
+seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful
+arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy
+hammer upon the sunny locks, felled the child to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+ground. It was with a loud cry of the indignation of a
+stranger, not with that of a tigress defending her cub,
+that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle
+him. I then remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow
+myself, I was grasping but another shadow!....</p>
+
+<p>My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the
+whole steamer. They were attributed to a nightmare.
+I did not seek to take anyone into my confidence; but,
+from that day forward, my life became a long series of
+mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without
+becoming witness of some horrible deed, some scene of
+misery, death or crime, whether past, present or even
+future—as I ascertained later on. It was as though
+some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of
+making me go through the vision of everything that was
+bestial, malignant and hopeless, in this world of misery.
+No radiant vision of beauty or virtue ever lit with the
+faintest ray these pictures of awe and wretchedness that
+I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of
+murder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my
+sight, and I was brought face to face with the vilest
+results of man’s passions, the most terrible outcome of
+his material earthly cravings.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results,
+when he spoke of Daij-Dzins to whom I left “an ingress”
+“a door open” in me? Nonsense! There must be some
+physiological, abnormal change in me. Once at Nuremberg,
+when I have ascertained how false was the
+direction taken by my fears—I dared not hope for no
+misfortune at all—these meaningless visions will disappear
+as they came. The very fact that my fancy
+follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of
+human passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof
+to me, of their unreality.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter,
+the object of the physical senses; and if perception with
+its modes is only the result of the organization of the
+brain, then should we be naturally attracted but to the
+material, the earthly”.... I thought I heard the
+familiar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections,
+and repeating an often used argument of his in his
+discussions with me.</p>
+
+<p>“There are two planes of visions before men,” I again
+heard him say, “the plane of undying love and spiritual
+aspirations, the efflux from the eternal light; and the
+plane of restless, ever changing matter, the light in
+which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe.”</p>
+
+
+<h3>VII<br />
+
+Eternity in a Short Dream</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> those days I could hardly bring myself to realize,
+even for a moment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind
+of spirits, whether good or bad. I now understood, if
+I did not believe, what was meant by the term, though I
+still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove some
+physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To
+fortify my unbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my
+memory all the arguments used against a faith in such
+superstitions, that I had ever read or heard. I recalled
+the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm reasoning of
+Hume, and I repeated to myself <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad nauseam</i> the words
+of Rousseau, who said that superstition, “the disturber of
+Society,” could never be too strongly attacked. “Why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+should the sight, the phantasmagoria, rather”—I argued—“of
+that which we know in a waking sense to be false,
+come to affect us at all?” Why should—</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Names, whose sense we see not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fray us with things that be not?<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>One day the old captain was narrating to us the various
+superstitions to which sailors were addicted; a pompous
+English missionary remarked that Fielding had declared
+long ago that “superstition renders a man a fool,”—after
+which he hesitated for an instant, and abruptly stopped.
+I had not taken any part in the general conversation;
+but no sooner had the reverend speaker relieved himself
+of the quotation, than I saw in that halo of vibrating
+light, which I now noticed almost constantly over every
+human head on the steamer, the words of Fielding’s next
+proposition—“and <em>scepticism makes him mad</em>.”</p>
+
+<p>I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend
+to seership, that they often see the thoughts of
+people traced in the aura of those present. Whatever
+“aura” may mean with others, I had now a personal experience
+of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently
+disgusted with the discovery! I—a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">clairvoyant</i>! a new
+horror added to my life, an absurd and ridiculous gift
+developed, which I shall have to conceal from all, feeling
+ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy. At this
+moment my hatred to the Yamabooshi, and even to my
+venerable old friend, the Bonze, knew no bounds. The
+former had evidently by his manipulations over me while
+I was lying unconscious, touched some unknown physiological
+spring in my brain, and by loosing it had called
+forth a faculty generally hidden in the human constitution;
+and it was the Japanese priest who had introduced
+the wretch into my house!</p>
+
+<p>But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+could be of no avail. Moreover, we were already in
+European waters, and in a few more days we should be
+at Hamburg. Then would my doubts and fears be set
+at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that
+although clairvoyance, as regards the reading of human
+thoughts on the spot, may have some truth in it, the
+discernment of such events at a distance, as I had
+<em>dreamed of</em>, was an impossibility for human faculties.
+Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart
+was sick with fear, and full of the blackest presentiments;
+I <em>felt</em> that my doom was closing. I suffered
+terribly, my nervous and mental prostration becoming
+intensified day by day.</p>
+
+<p>The night before we entered port I had a dream.</p>
+
+<p>I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in
+its last sleep, whilst its dying consciousness, which still
+regarded itself as “I,” realizing the event, was preparing
+to meet in a few seconds its own extinction. It had been
+always my belief that as the brain preserved heat longer
+than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease its
+activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several
+minutes. Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to
+find in my dream that while the frame had already crossed
+that awful gulf “no mortal e’er repassed,” its consciousness
+was still in the gray twilight, the first shadows of
+the great Mystery. Thus my <strong class="smcap">Thought</strong> wrapped, as I
+believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality,
+was watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches
+of its own dissolution, <abbr lang="la" xml:lang="la" title="id est">i.e.</abbr>, of its <em>annihilation</em>.
+“I” was hastening to record my last impressions, lest
+the dark mantle of eternal oblivion should envelope me,
+before I had time to feel and <em>enjoy</em>, the great, the supreme
+triumph of learning that my life-long convictions were
+true, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+conscious being. Everything around me was getting
+darker with every moment. Huge gray shadows were
+moving before my vision, slowly at first, then with accelerated
+motion, until they commenced whirling around
+with an almost vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though
+that motion had taken place only for purposes of brewing
+darkness, the object once reached, it slackened its
+speed, and as the darkness became gradually transformed
+into intense blackness, it ceased altogether. There was
+nothing now within my immediate perceptions, but that
+fathomless black Space, as dark as pitch: to me it appeared
+as limitless and as silent as the shoreless Ocean
+of Eternity upon which Time, the progeny of man’s
+brain, is for ever gliding, but which it can never cross.</p>
+
+<p>Dream is defined by Cato as “but the image of our
+hopes and fears.” Having never feared death when
+awake, I felt, in this dream of mine, calm and serene at
+the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt rather relieved
+at the thought—probably owing to my recent
+mental suffering—that the end of all, of doubt, of fear
+for those I loved, of suffering, and of every anxiety, was
+close at hand. The constant anguish that had been
+gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heart for many
+a long and weary month, had now become unbearable;
+and if as Seneca thinks, death is but “the ceasing to be
+what we were before,” it was better that I should die.
+The body is dead; “I,” its consciousness—that which is
+all that remains of me now, for a few moments longer—am
+preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get
+weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time,
+until the longed for oblivion envelopes me completely
+in its cold shroud. Sweet is the magic hand of Death,
+the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamless is
+sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcome<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+guest.... A calm and peaceful haven amidst the
+roaring billows of the Ocean of life, whose breakers lash
+in vain the rock-bound shores of Death. Happy the
+lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of its black
+gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about
+by the angry waves of sentient life. Moored in it for
+evermore, needing no longer either sail or rudder, my
+bark will now find rest. Welcome then, O Death, at this
+tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,
+having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I
+now readily give up!...</p>
+
+<p>While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form
+before me, I bent over, and examined it with curiosity.
+I felt the surrounding darkness oppressing me, weighing
+on me almost tangibly, and I fancied I found in it the approach
+of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet ...
+how very strange! If real, final Death takes place in
+our consciousness; if after the bodily death, “I” and my
+conscious perceptions are one—how is it that these
+perceptions do not become weaker, why does my <em>brain</em>-action
+seem as vigorous as ever now ... that I am
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">de facto</i> dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of
+anxiety, the “heavy heart” so-called, decrease in intensity;
+nay, it even seems to become worse ... unspeakably
+so!... How long it takes for full oblivion
+to arrive!... Ah, here’s my body again!...
+Vanished out of sight for a second or two, it reappears
+before me once more.... How white and ghastly it
+looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead, since
+“I,” its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy
+that we still are, that we live and think, disconnected
+from our creator and its ideating cell.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer
+the progress of dissolution was likely to last, before it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+placed its last seal on the brain and rendered it inactive.
+I examined my brain in its cranial cavity, through the
+(to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of the skull,
+and even <em>touched the brain-matter</em>.... How, or with
+<em>whose hands</em>, I am now unable to say; but the impression
+of the slimy, intensely cold matter produced a very
+strong impression on me, in that dream. To my great
+dismay, I found that the blood having entirely congealed
+and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a
+change that would no longer permit any molecular
+action, it became impossible for me to account for the
+phenomena now taking place with myself. Here was I,—or
+my consciousness, which is all one—standing apparently
+entirely disconnected from my brain which
+could no longer function.... But I had no time
+left for reflection. A new and most extraordinary
+change in my perceptions had taken place and now
+engrossed my whole attention.... What <em>does</em> this
+signify?...</p>
+
+<p>The same darkness was around me as before, a black,
+impenetrable space, extending in every direction. Only
+now, right before me, in whatever direction I was looking,
+moving with me which way soever I moved, there
+was a gigantic round clock; a disk, whose large white
+face shone ominously on the ebony-black background.
+As I looked at its huge dial, and at the pendulum moving
+to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, as if its
+swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles
+pointing to <em>seven minutes past five</em>. “The hour at which
+my torture had commenced at Kioto!” I had barely
+found time to think of the coincidence, when, to my
+unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the
+same, the identical, process that I had been made to
+experience on that memorable and fatal day. I swam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+underground, dashing swiftly through the earth; I found
+myself once more in the pauper’s grave and recognized
+my brother-in-law in the mangled remains; I witnessed
+his terrible death; entered my sister’s house; followed
+her agony, and saw her go mad. I went over the same
+scenes without missing a single detail of them. But,
+alas! I was no longer iron-bound in the calm indifference
+that had then been mine, and which in that first
+vision had left me as unfeeling to my great misfortune
+as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My mental
+tortures were now becoming beyond description and
+well-nigh unbearable. Even the settled despair, the
+never ceasing anxiety I was constantly experiencing
+when awake, had become now, in my dream and in
+the face of this repetition of visions and events, as an
+hour of darkened sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone.
+Oh! how I suffered in this wealth and pomp of infernal
+horrors, to which the conviction of the survival of man’s
+consciousness after death—for in that dream I firmly
+believed that my body was dead—added the most
+terrifying of all!</p>
+
+<p>The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the
+last scene, I saw once more the great white face of the
+dial before me was not of long duration. The long,
+arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the colossal disk
+at—<em>seven minutes and a-half past five</em> o’clock. But, before
+I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved
+slowly backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh
+minute, and—O cursed fate!... I found myself
+driven into a repetition of the same series over again!
+Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard, and
+suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed
+through every mental anguish known to man or fiend.
+I returned to see the fatal dial and its needle—after what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+appeared to me an eternity—moved, as before, only half
+a minute forward. I beheld it, with renewed terror,
+moving back again, and felt myself propelled forward
+anew. And so it went on, and on, and on, time after
+time, in what seemed to me an endless succession, a series
+which never had any beginning, nor would it ever have
+an end....</p>
+
+<p>Worst of all; my consciousness, my “I,” had apparently
+acquired the phenomenal capacity of trebling,
+quadrupling, and even of decuplating itself. I lived,
+felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in half-a-dozen
+different places at once, passing over various events
+of my life, at different epochs, and under the most
+dissimilar circumstances; though predominant over all
+was my <em>spiritual</em> experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the
+famous <em>fugue</em> in <cite>Don Giovanni</cite>, the heart-rending notes of
+Elvira’s <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">aria</i> of despair ring high above, but interfere in
+no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
+seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my
+travailed woes, the feelings of agony unspeakable at the
+awful sights of my vision, the repetition of which blunted
+in no wise even a single pang of my despair and horror;
+nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes and
+events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was
+living through again, or interfere in any way the one
+with the other. It was a maddening experience! A
+series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoria from real
+life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time,
+examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my
+sister’s husband; following with the same indifference
+the effects of the news on her brain, as in my first Kioto
+vision, and feeling <em>at the same time</em> hell-torture for these
+very events, as when I returned to consciousness. I was
+listening to the philosophical discourses of the Bonze,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+every word of which I heard and understood, and was
+trying to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then
+a youth, hearing my mother’s and my sweet sister’s
+voices, admonishing me and teaching duty to all men.
+I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering
+at his aged father who thanks me for having saved a
+“soul” yet unprepared to meet his Maker.</p>
+
+<p>“Speak of <em>dual</em> consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!”—I
+cried, in one of the moments when agony,
+mental and as it seemed to me physical also, had arrived
+at a degree of intensity which would have killed a dozen
+living men; “speak of your psychological and physiological
+experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with
+pride and book-learning! Here am I to give you the
+lie....” And now I was reading the works and
+holding converse with learned professors and lecturers,
+who had led me to my fatal scepticism. And, while
+arguing the impossibility of consciousness divorced from
+its brain, I was shedding tears of blood over the supposed
+fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible than all:
+I knew, <em>as only a liberated consciousness can know</em>, that all
+I had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was
+seeing and hearing over and over again now, was true in
+every point and detail, that it was a long string of ghastly
+and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.</p>
+
+<p>For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my
+attention on the needle of the clock, I had lost the
+number of my gyrations and was fast coming to the
+conclusion that they would never stop, that consciousness,
+is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be
+my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize
+from personal experience how the condemned sinners
+would feel—“were not eternal damnation a logical and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+mathematical impossibility in an ever progressing Universe”—I
+still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; at
+this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness—now
+my synonym for “I”—had still the power of
+revolting at certain theological claims, of denying all
+their propositions, all—save <span class="f8">ITSELF</span>.... No; I
+denied the independent nature of my consciousness no
+longer, for I knew it now to be such. But is it <em>eternal</em>
+withal? O thou incomprehensible and terrible Reality!
+But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?—since there
+is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when
+didst thou first appear, if thou art not a part of the cold
+body lying yonder? And whither dost thou lead me,
+who am thyself, and shall our thought and fancy have
+an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomable
+<strong class="smcap">Reality</strong>, and impenetrable <strong class="smcap">Mystery</strong>! Oh, I would
+fain annihilate thee.... “Soul-Vision”!—who
+speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says
+that I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man,
+after all.... I deny this. My Soul, my vital Soul,
+or the Spirit of life, has expired with my body, with the
+gray matter of my brain. This “I” of mine, this consciousness,
+is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation,
+in which the Bonze felt so anxious I should
+believe may be true.... Why not? Is not the
+flower born year after year from the same root? Hence
+this “I” once separated from its brain, losing its balance,
+and calling forth such a host of visions ... before
+reincarnating....</p>
+
+<p>I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal
+clock. And as I was watching its needle, I heard the
+voice of the Bonze, coming out of the depths of its white
+face, saying: “In this case, I fear, <em>you would only have to
+open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+during a period which, however short, would seem to you an
+eternity</em>.”...</p>
+
+<p>The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light,
+the voice of my old friend was drowned by a multitude of
+voices overhead on deck; and I awoke in my berth, covered
+with a cold perspiration, and faint with terror.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII<br />
+
+A Tale of Woe</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my
+partners, who could hardly recognize me, than with their
+consent and good wishes I started for Nuremberg.</p>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with
+regard to the correctness of my vision had disappeared.
+The reality was worse than any expectations could have
+made it, and I was henceforward doomed to the most
+desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible
+tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law,
+killed under the wheels of a machine; my sister,
+insane, and now rapidly sinking towards her end; my
+niece—the sweet flower of nature’s fairest work—dishonored,
+in a den of infamy; the little children dead
+of a contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving
+nephew at sea, no one knew where. A whole
+house, a home of love and peace, scattered; and I, left
+alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolation and
+dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I
+sank helpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+rose before me all at once. The shock proved too much,
+and I fainted. The last thing I heard before entirely
+losing my consciousness was a remark of the Burgmeister:
+“Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the city
+authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of
+coming home to take charge of your young relatives, we
+might have placed them elsewhere, and thus have saved
+them from their fate. No one knew that the children
+had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers and
+had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively
+strangers in Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate
+circumstances you could hardly have expected anything
+else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any
+rate, have saved my young niece from her unmerited
+fate, but that through my neglect I had not done so, that
+was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly advice
+of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities
+some weeks previous to my return much might have been
+avoided. It was all this, coupled with the fact that I
+could no longer doubt clairvoyance and clairaudience—the
+possibility of which I had so long denied—that
+brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could
+avoid the censure of my fellow-creatures, but I could
+never escape the stings of my conscience, the reproaches
+of my own aching heart—no, not as long as I lived. I
+cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts,
+my early education, I cursed myself, and the whole
+world....</p>
+
+<p>For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my
+load, for I had a duty to perform to the dead and to the
+living. But my sister once rescued from the pauper’s
+asylum, placed under the care of the best physicians,
+with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime,
+safely lodged in jail—my fortitude and strength suddenly
+abandoned me. Hardly a week after my arrival I
+was myself no better than a raving maniac, helpless in
+the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I
+lay between life and death, the terrible disease defying
+the skill of the best physicians. At last my strong constitution
+prevailed, and—to my life-long sorrow—they
+proclaimed me saved.</p>
+
+<p>I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to
+drag the loathsome burden of life henceforth alone, and
+in constant remorse; hoping for no help or remedy on
+earth, and still refusing to believe in the possibility of
+anything better than a short survival of consciousness
+beyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added
+only one more drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They
+were hardly soothed by the immediate return, during
+the first days of my convalescence, of those unwelcome
+and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality
+I could deny no more. Alas the day! they were no
+longer in my sceptical, blind mind—</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The children of an idle brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and
+sufferings of my fellow creatures, of my best friends....
+Thus I found myself doomed, whenever I was
+left for a moment alone, to the helpless torture of a
+chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night,
+as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself
+led to my sister’s bedside, forced to watch there
+hour after hour, and see the silent disintegration of her
+wasted organism; to witness and feel the sufferings that
+her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or convey
+to her perceptions. But there was something still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+more horrible to barb the dart that could never be extricated.
+I had to look, by day, at the childish innocent
+face of my young niece, so sublimely simple and guileless
+in her pollution; and to witness, by night, how the full
+knowledge and recollection of her dishonor, of her young
+life now for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as
+soon as she was asleep. These dreams took an objective
+form to me, as they had done on the steamer; I had to
+live them over again, night after night, and feel the same
+terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the reality
+of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our
+bodies lies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis
+which may contain in its turn the butterfly—the symbol
+of the soul—I no longer remained indifferent, as of yore,
+to what I witnessed in my Soul-life. Something had
+suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy
+cocoon. Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence
+of the identification of my inner nature with a Daij-Dzin;
+my visions arose in consequence of a direct personal
+psychic development, the fiendish creatures only taking
+care that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating
+nature. Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my
+dying sister’s emaciated body, not a thrill of horror in
+my niece’s restless sleep at the recollection of the crime
+perpetrated upon her, an innocent child, but found a
+responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The deep fountain
+of sympathetic love and sorrow had gushed out from the
+physical heart, and was now loudly echoed by the
+awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had I to
+drain the cup of misery to the very dregs! Woe is me,
+it was a daily and nightly torture! Oh, how I mourned
+over my proud folly; how I was punished for having
+neglected to avail myself at Kioto of the proffered purification,
+for now I had come to believe even in the efficacy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+of the latter. The Daij-Dzin had indeed obtained control
+over me; and the fiend had let loose all the dogs of hell
+upon his victim....</p>
+
+<p>At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The
+poor insane martyr dropped into her dark, and now
+welcome grave, leaving behind her, but for a few short
+months, her young, her first-born, daughter. Consumption
+made short work of that tender girlish frame.
+Hardly a year after my arrival, I was left alone in the
+whole wide world, my only surviving nephew having
+expressed a desire to follow his sea-faring career.</p>
+
+<p>And now, the sequel of my sad, sad story is soon told.
+A wreck, a prematurely old man, looking at thirty as
+though sixty winters had passed over my doomed head,
+and owing to the never-ceasing visions, myself daily on
+the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate
+resolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the
+Yamabooshi. I would prostrate myself at the feet of the
+holy man, and would not leave him until he had recalled
+the Frankenstein he had raised, the Frankenstein with
+whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would not part,
+through my insolent pride and unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>Three months later I was in my Japanese home again,
+and I at once sought out my old, venerable Bonze,
+Tamoora Hideyeri, I now implored him to take me without
+an hour’s delay, to the Yamabooshi, the innocent
+cause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the
+last, the supreme seal on my doom and tenfold intensified
+my despair. The Yamabooshi had left the country for
+lands unknown! He had departed one fine morning into
+the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to custom,
+would be absent, unless natural death shortened the
+period, for no less than seven years!...</p>
+
+<p>In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+other learned Yamabooshis; and though well aware how
+useless it was in my case to seek efficient cure from any
+other “adept,” my excellent old friend did everything
+he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was to no
+purpose, and the canker-worm of my life’s despair could
+not be thoroughly extricated. I found from them that
+not one of these learned men could promise to relieve
+me entirely from the demon of clairvoyant obsession.
+It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them
+to show futurity, or things that had already come to
+pass, who alone had full control over them. With kind
+sympathy, which I had now learned to appreciate, the
+holy men invited me to join the group of their disciples,
+and learn from them what I could do for myself. “Will
+alone, faith in your own soul powers, can help you now,”
+they said. “But it may take several years to undo even
+a part of the great mischief;” they added. “A Daij-Dzin
+is easily dislodged in the beginning; if left alone, he takes
+possession of a man’s nature, and it becomes almost
+impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim.”</p>
+
+<p>Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me
+to do, I gratefully assented, doing my best to believe in
+all that these holy men believed in, and yet ever failing
+to do so in my heart. The demon of unbelief and all-denial
+seemed rooted in me more firmly even than the
+Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was
+not to lose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I
+proceeded without delay to free myself from the world
+and my commercial obligations, in order to live for
+several years an independent life. I settled my accounts
+with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection
+with the firm. Notwithstanding considerable financial
+losses resulting from such a precipitate liquidation, I
+found myself, after closing the accounts, a far richer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no
+longer any attraction for me, now that I had no one to
+share it with, no one to work for. Life had become a
+burden; and such was my indifference to my future,
+that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew—in
+case he should return alive from his sea voyage—I
+should have neglected entirely even a small provision
+for myself, had not my native partner interfered and
+insisted upon my making it. I now recognized with
+Lao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a
+man to trust to, as it is the only one that cannot be
+shaken by any tempest. Wealth is a weak anchor in
+days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatal counsellor.
+Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid aside
+for myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to
+assure me a small income for life, or if I ever left my
+new friends and instructors. Having settled my earthly
+accounts and disposed of my belongings at Kioto, I
+joined the “Masters of the Long Vision,” who took me
+to their mysterious abode. There I remained for several
+years, studying very earnestly and in the most complete
+solitude, seeing no one but a few of the members of our
+religious community.</p>
+
+<p>Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed
+since then, and many a secret folio from the library of
+Tzion-ene have I devoured, obtaining thereby mastery
+over several kinds of invisible beings of a lower order.
+But the great secret of power over the terrible Daij-Dzin
+I could not get. It remains in the possession of a very
+limited number of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the
+great majority of the Yamabooshis themselves being
+ignorant how to obtain such mastery over the dangerous
+Elemental. One who would reach such power of control
+would have to become entirely identified with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+Yamabooshis, to accept their views and beliefs, and to
+attain the highest degree of Initiation. Very naturally,
+I was found unfit to join the Fraternity, owing to many
+insurmountable reasons besides my congenital and ineradicable
+scepticism, though I tried hard to believe.
+Thus, partially relieved of my affliction and taught how
+to conjure the unwelcome visions away, I still remained,
+and do remain to this day, helpless to prevent their forced
+appearance before me now and then.</p>
+
+<p>It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the
+exalted position of an independent Seer and Adept that
+I reluctantly gave up any further trial. Nothing had
+been heard of the holy man, the first innocent cause of
+my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who occasionally
+visited me in my retreat, either could not, or
+would not, inform me of the whereabouts of the Yamabooshi.
+When, therefore, I had to give up all hope of
+his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift, I
+resolved to return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the
+rest of my life. With this object in view, I purchased
+through my late partners the Swiss <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlet</i> in which my
+hapless sister and I were born, where I had grown up
+under her care, and selected it for my future hermitage.</p>
+
+<p>When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer
+which took me back to my fatherland, the good old
+Bonze tried to console me for my disappointments.
+“My son,” he said, “regard all that happened to you
+as your <i lang="pi" xml:lang="pi">Karma</i>—a just retribution. No one who has
+subjected himself willingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin
+can ever hope to become a <i lang="pi" xml:lang="pi">Rahat</i> (an Adept), a high-souléd
+Yamabooshi—unless immediately purified. At
+best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose
+and to successfully fight off the fiend. <em>Like a scar left
+after a poisonous wound, the trace of a Daij-Dzin can never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+be effaced from the Soul until purified by a new rebirth.</em>
+Withal, feel not dejected, but be of good cheer in your
+affliction, since it has led you to acquire true knowledge,
+and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise
+rejected with contempt. And of this priceless knowledge,
+acquired through suffering and personal efforts—no
+Daij-Dzin can ever deprive you. Fare thee well, then, and
+may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen of Heaven,
+afford you comfort and protection.”</p>
+
+<p>We parted, and since then I have led the life of an
+anchorite, in constant solitude and study. Though still
+occasionally afflicted, I do not regret the years I have
+passed under the instruction of the Yamabooshis, but
+feel gratified for the knowledge received. Of the priest
+Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affection
+and respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the
+day of his death; an event which, with all its to me
+painful details, I had the unthanked-for privilege of
+witnessing across the seas, at the very hour in which it
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CAVE_OF_THE_ECHOES" id="THE_CAVE_OF_THE_ECHOES"></a>THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES
+<br />
+<span class="stl">A Strange but True Story<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor"><span class="f8">[2]</span></a></span></h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p065cap.jpg" width="123" height="215" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="upper">In</span> one of the distant governments of
+the Russian empire, in a small town
+on the borders of Siberia, a mysterious
+tragedy occurred more than thirty
+years ago. About six versts from
+the little town of P——, famous for
+the wild beauty of its scenery, and
+for the wealth of its inhabitants—generally
+proprietors of mines and of
+iron foundries—stood an aristocratic
+mansion. Its household consisted of
+the master, a rich old bachelor and his
+brother, who was a widower and the
+father of two sons and three daughters. It was known
+that the proprietor, Mr. Izvertzoff, had adopted his
+brother’s children, and, having formed an especial attachment
+for his eldest nephew, Nicolas, he had made him
+the sole heir of his numerous estates.</p>
+
+<p>Time rolled on. The uncle was getting old, the
+nephew was coming of age. Days and years had passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+in monotonous serenity, when, on the hitherto clear
+horizon of the quiet family, appeared a cloud. On an
+unlucky day one of the nieces took it into her head to
+study the zither. The instrument being of purely Teutonic
+origin, and no teacher of it residing in the neighborhood,
+the indulgent uncle sent to St. Petersburg
+for both. After diligent search only one Professor
+could be found willing to trust himself in such close
+proximity to Siberia. It was an old German artist, who,
+sharing his affections equally between his instrument
+and a pretty blonde daughter, would part with neither.
+And thus it came to pass that one fine morning the old
+Professor arrived at the mansion, with his music box
+under one arm and his fair Munchen leaning on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>From that day the little cloud began growing rapidly;
+for every vibration of the melodious instrument found
+a responsive echo in the old bachelor’s heart. Music
+awakens love, they say, and the work begun by the
+zither was completed by Munchen’s blue eyes. At the
+expiration of six months the niece had become an
+expert zither player, and the uncle was desperately
+in love.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, gathering his adopted family around
+him, he embraced them all very tenderly, promised to
+remember them in his will, and wound up by declaring
+his unalterable resolution to marry the blue-eyed Munchen.
+After this he fell upon their necks and wept in
+silent rapture. The family, understanding that they
+were cheated out of the inheritance, also wept; but it
+was for another cause. Having thus wept, they consoled
+themselves and tried to rejoice, for the old gentleman
+was sincerely beloved by all. Not all of them
+rejoiced, though. Nicolas, who had himself been smitten<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+to the heart by the pretty German, and who found himself
+defrauded at once of his belle and of his uncle’s
+money, neither rejoiced nor consoled himself, but disappeared
+for a whole day.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Mr. Izvertzoff had given orders to prepare
+his traveling carriage on the following day, and it was
+whispered that he was going to the chief town of the
+district, at some distance from his home, with the intention
+of altering his will. Though very wealthy, he
+had no superintendent on his estate, but kept his books
+himself. The same evening after supper, he was heard
+in his room, angrily scolding his servant, who had been
+in his service for over thirty years. This man, Ivan,
+was a native of northern Asia, from Kamschatka; he
+had been brought up by the family in the Christian
+religion, and was thought to be very much attached to
+his master. A few days later, when the first tragic circumstance
+I am about to relate had brought all the
+police force to the spot, it was remembered that on that
+night Ivan was drunk; that his master, who had a
+horror of this vice had paternally thrashed him, and
+turned him out of his room, and that Ivan had been
+seen reeling out of the door, and had been heard to
+mutter threats.</p>
+
+<p>On the vast domain of Mr. Izvertzoff there was a
+curious cavern, which excited the curiosity of all who
+visited it. It exists to this day, and is well known to
+every inhabitant of P——. A pine forest, commencing
+a few feet from the garden gate, climbs in steep terraces
+up a long range of rocky hills, which it covers with a
+broad belt of impenetrable vegetation. The grotto leading
+into the cavern, which is known as the “Cave of the
+Echoes,” is situated about half a mile from the site of
+the mansion, from which it appears as a small excavation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+in the hill-side, almost hidden by luxuriant plants, but
+not so completely as to prevent any person entering
+it from being readily seen from the terrace in front of
+the house. Entering the Grotto, the explorer finds at
+the rear a narrow cleft; having passed through which
+he emerges into a lofty cavern, feebly lighted through
+fissures in the vaulted roof, fifty feet from the ground.
+The cavern itself is immense, and would easily hold
+between two and three thousand people. A part of it,
+in the days of Mr. Izvertzoff, was paved with flagstones,
+and was often used in the summer as a ball-room by
+picnic parties. Of an irregular oval, it gradually narrows
+into a broad corridor, which runs for several miles
+underground, opening here and there into other chambers,
+as large and lofty as the ball-room, but, unlike this,
+impassable otherwise than in a boat, as they are always
+full of water. These natural basins have the reputation
+of being unfathomable.</p>
+
+<p>On the margin of the first of these is a small platform,
+with several mossy rustic seats arranged on it, and it is
+from this spot that the phenomenal echoes, which give
+the cavern its name, are heard in all their weirdness. A
+word pronounced in a whisper, or even a sigh, is caught
+up by endless mocking voices, and instead of diminishing
+in volume, as honest echoes do, the sound grows
+louder and louder at every successive repetition, until at
+last it bursts forth like the repercussion of a pistol shot,
+and recedes in a plaintive wail down the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>On the day in question, Mr. Izvertzoff had mentioned
+his intention of having a dancing party in this cave on
+his wedding day, which he had fixed for an early date.
+On the following morning, while preparing for his drive,
+he was seen by his family entering the grotto, accompanied
+only by his Siberian servant. Half-an-hour later,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+Ivan returned to the mansion for a snuff-box, which his
+master had forgotten in his room, and went back with it
+to the cave. An hour later the whole house was startled
+by his loud cries. Pale and dripping with water, Ivan
+rushed in like a madman, and declared that Mr. Izvertzoff
+was nowhere to be found in the cave. Thinking he had
+fallen into the lake, he had dived into the first basin in
+search of him and was nearly drowned himself.</p>
+
+<p>The day passed in vain attempts to find the body.
+The police filled the house, and louder than the rest in
+his despair was Nicolas, the nephew, who had returned
+home only to meet the sad tidings.</p>
+
+<p>A dark suspicion fell upon Ivan, the Siberian. He
+had been struck by his master the night before, and had
+been heard to swear revenge. He had accompanied him
+alone to the cave, and when his room was searched, a
+box full of rich family jewelry, known to have been
+carefully kept in Mr. Izvertzoff’s apartment, was found
+under Ivan’s bedding. Vainly did the serf call God to
+witness that the box had been given to him in charge by
+his master himself, just before they proceeded to the
+cave; that it was the latter’s purpose to have the jewelry
+reset, as he intended it for a wedding present to his bride;
+and that he, Ivan, would willingly give his own life to
+recall that of his master, if he knew him to be dead. No
+heed was paid to him, however, and he was arrested and
+thrown into prison upon a charge of murder. There he
+was left, for under the Russian law a criminal cannot—at
+any rate, he could not in those days—be sentenced
+for a crime, however conclusive the circumstantial evidence,
+unless he confessed his guilt.</p>
+
+<p>After a week had passed in useless search, the family
+arrayed themselves in deep mourning; and, as the will
+as originally drawn remained without a codicil, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+whole of the property passed into the hands of the
+nephew. The old teacher and his daughter bore this
+sudden reverse of fortune with true Germanic phlegm,
+and prepared to depart. Taking again his zither under
+one arm, the old man was about to lead away his Munchen
+by the other, when the nephew stopped him by
+offering himself as the fair damsel’s husband in the place
+of his departed uncle. The change was found to be an
+agreeable one, and, without much ado, the young people
+were married.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>Ten years rolled away, and we meet the happy family
+once more at the beginning of 1859. The fair Munchen
+had grown fat and vulgar. From the day of the old
+man’s disappearance, Nicolas had become morose and
+retired in his habits, and many wondered at the change
+in him, for now he was never seen to smile. It seemed
+as if his only aim in life were to find out his uncle’s
+murderer, or rather to bring Ivan to confess his guilt.
+But the man still persisted that he was innocent.</p>
+
+<p>An only son had been born to the young couple, and a
+strange child it was. Small, delicate, and ever ailing,
+his frail life seemed to hang by a thread. When his
+features were in repose, his resemblance to his uncle was
+so striking that the members of the family often shrank
+from him in terror. It was the pale shriveled face of a
+man of sixty upon the shoulders of a child nine years
+old. He was never seen either to laugh or to play, but,
+perched in his high chair, would gravely sit there, folding
+his arms in a way peculiar to the late Mr. Izvertzoff;
+and thus he would remain for hours, drowsy and motionless.
+His nurses were often seen furtively crossing
+themselves at night, upon approaching him, and not one
+of them would consent to sleep alone with him in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+nursery. His father’s behavior towards him was still
+more strange. He seemed to love him passionately, and
+at the same time to hate him bitterly. He seldom embraced
+or caressed the child, but, with livid cheek and
+staring eye, he would pass long hours watching him, as
+the child sat quietly in his corner, in his goblin-like,
+old-fashioned way.</p>
+
+<p>The child had never left the estate, and few outside
+the family knew of his existence.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of July, a tall Hungarian traveler,
+preceded by a great reputation for eccentricity, wealth
+and mysterious powers, arrived at the town of P——
+from the North, where, it was said, he had resided for
+many years. He settled in the little town, in company
+with a Shaman or South Siberian magician, on whom
+he was said to make mesmeric experiments. He gave
+dinners and parties, and invariably exhibited his Shaman,
+of whom he felt very proud, for the amusement of his
+guests. One day the notables of P—— made an unexpected
+invasion of the domains of Nicolas Izvertzoff,
+and requested the loan of his cave for an evening entertainment.
+Nicolas consented with great reluctance, and
+only after still greater hesitancy was he prevailed upon
+to join the party.</p>
+
+<p>The first cavern and the platform beside the bottomless
+lake glittered with lights. Hundreds of flickering
+candles and torches, stuck in the clefts of the rocks,
+illuminated the place and drove the shadows from the
+mossy nooks and corners, where they had crouched undisturbed
+for many years. The stalactites on the walls
+sparkled brightly, and the sleeping echoes were suddenly
+awakened by a joyous confusion of laughter and conversation.
+The Shaman, who was never lost sight of by
+his friend and patron, sat in a corner, entranced as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+usual. Crouched on a projecting rock, about midway
+between the entrance and the water, with his lemon-yellow,
+wrinkled face, flat nose, and thin beard, he
+looked more like an ugly stone idol than a human being.
+Many of the company pressed around him and received
+correct answers to their questions, the Hungarian cheerfully
+submitting his mesmerized “subject” to cross-examination.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly one of the party, a lady, remarked that it
+was in that very cave that old Mr. Izvertzoff had so unaccountably
+disappeared ten years before. The foreigner
+appeared interested, and desired to learn more of the
+circumstances, so Nicolas was sought amid the crowd
+and led before the eager group. He was the host and
+he found it impossible to refuse the demanded narrative.
+He repeated the sad tale in a trembling voice, with a
+pallid cheek, and tears were seen glittering in his feverish
+eyes. The company were greatly affected, and encomiums
+upon the behavior of the loving nephew in
+honoring the memory of his uncle and benefactor were
+freely circulating in whispers, when suddenly the voice
+of Nicolas became choked, his eyes started from their
+sockets, and with a suppressed groan, he staggered back.
+Every eye in the crowd followed with curiosity his
+haggard look, as it fell and remained riveted upon a
+weazened little face, that peeped from behind the back
+of the Hungarian.</p>
+
+<p>“Where do you come from? Who brought you here,
+child?” gasped out Nicolas, as pale as death.</p>
+
+<p>“I was in bed, papa; this man came to me, and
+brought me here in his arms,” answered the boy simply,
+pointing to the Shaman, beside whom he stood upon
+the rock, and who, with his eyes closed, kept swaying
+himself to and fro like a living pendulum.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“That is very strange,” remarked one of the guests,
+“for the man has never moved from his place.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good God! what an extraordinary resemblance!”
+muttered an old resident of the town, a friend of the
+lost man.</p>
+
+<p>“You lie, child!” fiercely exclaimed the father. “Go
+to bed; this is no place for you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come, come,” interposed the Hungarian, with a
+strange expression on his face, and encircling with his
+arm the slender childish figure; “the little fellow has
+seen the double of my Shaman, which roams sometimes
+far away from his body, and has mistaken the phantom
+for the man himself. Let him remain with us for a
+while.”</p>
+
+<p>At these strange words the guests stared at each other
+in mute surprise, while some piously made the sign of
+the cross, spitting aside, presumably at the devil and all
+his works.</p>
+
+<p>“By-the-bye,” continued the Hungarian with a peculiar
+firmness of accent, and addressing the company
+rather than any one in particular; “why should we not
+try, with the help of my Shaman, to unravel the mystery
+hanging over the tragedy? Is the suspected party still
+lying in prison? What? he has not confessed up to
+now? This is surely very strange. But now we will
+learn the truth in a few minutes! Let all keep silent!”</p>
+
+<p>He then approached the Tehuktchene, and immediately
+began his performance without so much as asking the
+consent of the master of the place. The latter stood
+rooted to the spot, as if petrified with horror, and unable
+to articulate a word. The suggestion met with general
+approbation, save from him; and the police inspector,
+Col. S——, especially approved of the idea.</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the mesmerizer in soft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+tones, “allow me for this once to proceed otherwise than
+in my general fashion. I will employ the method of
+native magic. It is more appropriate to this wild place,
+and far more effective as you will find, than our European
+method of mesmerization.”</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for an answer, he drew from a bag
+that never left his person, first a small drum, and then
+two little phials—one full of fluid, the other empty.
+With the contents of the former he sprinkled the Shaman,
+who fell to trembling and nodding more violently
+than ever. The air was filled with the perfume of spicy
+odors, and the atmosphere itself seemed to become
+clearer. Then, to the horror of those present, he approached
+the Tibetan, and taking a miniature stiletto
+from his pocket, he plunged the sharp steel into the
+man’s forearm, and drew blood from it, which he caught
+in the empty phial. When it was half filled, he pressed
+the orifice of the wound with his thumb, and stopped the
+flow of blood as easily as if he had corked a bottle, after
+which he sprinkled the blood over the little boy’s head.
+He then suspended the drum from his neck, and, with
+two ivory drum-sticks, which were covered with magic
+signs and letters, he began beating a sort of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">réveille</i>, to
+drum up the spirits, as he said.</p>
+
+<p>The bystanders, half-shocked and half-terrified by
+these extraordinary proceedings, eagerly crowded round
+him, and for a few moments a dead silence reigned
+throughout the lofty cavern. Nicolas, with his face
+livid and corpse-like, stood speechless as before. The
+mesmerizer had placed himself between the Shaman and
+the platform, when he began slowly drumming. The
+first notes were muffled, and vibrated so softly in the air
+that they awakened no echo, but the Shaman quickened
+his pendulum-like motion and the child became restless.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+The drummer then began a slow chant, low, impressive
+and solemn.</p>
+
+<p>As the unknown words issued from his lips, the flames
+of the candles and torches wavered and flickered, until
+they began dancing in rhythm with the chant. A cold
+wind came wheezing from the dark corridors beyond
+the water, leaving a plaintive echo in its trail. Then
+a sort of nebulous vapor, seeming to ooze from the rocky
+ground and walls, gathered about the Shaman and
+the boy. Around the latter the aura was silvery and
+transparent, but the cloud which enveloped the former
+was red and sinister. Approaching nearer to the platform
+the magician beat a louder roll upon the drum, and
+this time the echo caught it up with terrific effect! It
+reverberated near and far in incessant peals; one wail
+followed another, louder and louder, until the thundering
+roar seemed the chorus of a thousand demon voices
+rising from the fathomless depths of the lake. The
+water itself, whose surface, illuminated by many lights,
+had previously been smooth as a sheet of glass, became
+suddenly agitated, as if a powerful gust of wind had
+swept over its unruffled face.</p>
+
+<p>Another chant, and a roll of the drum, and the mountain
+trembled to its foundation with the cannon-like
+peals which rolled through the dark and distant corridors.
+The Shaman’s body rose two yards in the air, and
+nodding and swaying, sat, self-suspended like an apparition.
+But the transformation which now occurred in
+the boy chilled everyone, as they speechlessly watched
+the scene. The silvery cloud about the boy now seemed
+to lift him, too, into the air; but, unlike the Shaman,
+his feet never left the ground. The child began to grow,
+as though the work of years was miraculously accomplished
+in a few seconds. He became tall and large,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+and his senile features grew older with the ageing of his
+body. A few more seconds, and the youthful form had
+entirely disappeared. It was totally absorbed in another
+individuality, and to the horror of those present who had
+been familiar with his appearance, this individuality was
+that of old Mr. Izvertzoff, and on his temple was a large
+gaping wound, from which trickled great drops of blood.</p>
+
+<p>This phantom moved towards Nicolas, till it stood
+directly in front of him, while he, with his hair standing
+erect, with the look of a madman gazed at his own son,
+transformed into his uncle. The sepulchral silence was
+broken by the Hungarian, who, addressing the child
+phantom, asked him in solemn voice:</p>
+
+<p>“In the name of the great Master, of him who has
+all power, answer the truth, and nothing but the truth.
+Restless spirit, hast thou been lost by accident, or foully
+murdered?”</p>
+
+<p>The specter’s lips moved, but it was the echo which
+answered for them in lugubrious shouts: “Murdered!
+murdered!! mur-der-ed!!!”</p>
+
+<p>“Where? How? By whom?” asked the conjuror.</p>
+
+<p>The apparition pointed a finger at Nicolas and, without
+removing its gaze or lowering its arm, retreated
+backwards slowly towards the lake. At every step it
+took, the younger Izvertzoff, as if compelled by some
+irresistible fascination, advanced a step towards it, until
+the phantom reached the lake, and the next moment was
+seen gliding on its surface. It was a fearful, ghostly scene!</p>
+
+<p>When he had come within two steps of the brink of
+the watery abyss, a violent convulsion ran through the
+frame of the guilty man. Flinging himself upon his
+knees, he clung to one of the rustic seats with a desperate
+clutch, and staring wildly, uttered a long piercing cry of
+agony. The phantom now remained motionless on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+water, and bending its extended finger, slowly beckoned
+him to come. Crouched in abject terror, the wretched
+man shrieked until the cavern rang again and again:
+“I did not.... No, I did not murder you!”</p>
+
+<p>Then came a splash, and now it was the boy who was
+in the dark water, struggling for his life, in the middle
+of the lake, with the same motionless stern apparition
+brooding over him.</p>
+
+<p>“Papa! papa! Save me.... I am drowning!”
+... cried a piteous little voice amid the uproar of
+the mocking echoes.</p>
+
+<p>“My boy!” shrieked Nicolas, in the accents of a
+maniac, springing to his feet. “My boy! Save him!
+Oh, save him!... Yes, I confess.... I am
+the murderer.... It is I who killed him!”</p>
+
+<p>Another splash, and the phantom disappeared. With
+a cry of horror the company rushed towards the platform;
+but their feet were suddenly rooted to the ground,
+as they saw amid the swirling eddies a whitish shapeless
+mass holding the murderer and the boy in tight embrace,
+and slowly sinking into the bottomless lake.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after these occurrences, when, after a
+sleepless night, some of the party visited the residence
+of the Hungarian gentleman, they found it closed and
+deserted. He and the Shaman had disappeared. Many
+are among the old inhabitants of P—— who remember
+him; the Police Inspector, Col. S——, dying a few years
+ago in the full assurance that the noble traveler was the
+devil. To add to the general consternation the Izvertzoff
+mansion took fire on that same night and was completely
+destroyed. The Archbishop performed the ceremony
+of exorcism, but the locality is considered accursed
+to this day. The Government investigated the
+facts, and—ordered silence.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This story is given from the narrative of an eye-witness, a
+Russian gentleman, very pious, and fully trustworthy. Moreover,
+the facts are copied from the police records of P——. The eyewitness
+in question attributes it, of course, partly to divine
+interference and partly to the Evil One.—H.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;B.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LUMINOUS_SHIELD" id="THE_LUMINOUS_SHIELD"></a>THE LUMINOUS SHIELD</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p081cap.jpg" width="137" height="242" alt="W" title="W" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="upper">We</span> were a small and select party of
+light-hearted travelers. We had
+arrived at Constantinople a week
+before from Greece, and had devoted
+fourteen hours a day ever since to
+toiling up and down the steep
+heights of Pera, visiting bazaars,
+climbing to the tops of minarets
+and fighting our way through
+armies of hungry dogs, the traditional
+masters of the streets of
+Stamboul. Nomadic life is infectious,
+they say, and no civilization
+is strong enough to destroy the
+charm of unrestrained freedom when it has once been
+tasted. The gipsy cannot be tempted from his tent, and
+even the common tramp finds a fascination in his comfortless
+and precarious existence, that prevents him
+taking to any fixed abode and occupation. To guard
+my spaniel Ralph from falling a victim to this infection,
+and joining the canine Bedouins that infested the streets,
+was my chief care during our stay in Constantinople.
+He was a fine fellow, my constant companion and
+cherished friend. Afraid of losing him, I kept a strict
+watch over his movements; for the first three days,
+however, he behaved like a tolerably well-educated
+quadruped, and remained faithfully at my heels. At
+every impudent attack from his Mahomedan cousins,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+whether intended as a hostile demonstration or an overture
+of friendship, his only reply would be to draw in his
+tail between his legs, and with an air of dignified
+modesty seek protection under the wing of one or other
+of our party.</p>
+
+<p>As he had thus from the first shown so decided an
+aversion to bad company, I began to feel assured of his
+discretion, and by the end of the third day I had
+considerably relaxed my vigilance. This carelessness on
+my part, however, was soon punished, and I was made
+to regret my misplaced confidence. In an unguarded
+moment he listened to the voice of some four-footed
+syren, and the last I saw of him was the end of his
+bushy tail, vanishing round the corner of a dirty,
+winding little back street.</p>
+
+<p>Greatly annoyed, I passed the remainder of the day in
+a vain search after my dumb companion. I offered
+twenty, thirty, forty francs reward for him. About as
+many vagabond Maltese began a regular chase, and
+towards evening we were invaded in our hotel by the
+whole troop, every man of them with a more or less
+mangy cur in his arms, which he tried to persuade me
+was my lost dog. The more I denied, the more solemnly
+they insisted, one of them actually going down on his
+knees, snatching from his bosom an old corroded metal
+image of the Virgin, and swearing a solemn oath that the
+Queen of Heaven herself had kindly appeared to him to
+point out the right animal. The tumult had increased to
+such an extent that it looked as if Ralph’s disappearance
+was going to be the cause of a small riot, and finally our
+landlord had to send for a couple of Kavasses from the
+nearest police station, and have this regiment of bipeds
+and quadrupeds expelled by main force. I began to be
+convinced that I should never see my dog again, and I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+was the more despondent since the porter of the hotel, a
+semi-respectable old brigand, who, to judge by appearances,
+had not passed more than half-a-dozen years at
+the galleys, gravely assured me that all my pains were
+useless, as my spaniel was undoubtedly dead and
+devoured too by this time, the Turkish dogs being very
+fond of their more toothsome English brothers.</p>
+
+<p>All this discussion had taken place in the street at the
+door of the hotel, and I was about to give up the search
+for that night at least, and enter the hotel, when an old
+Greek lady, a Phanariote who had been hearing the
+fracas from the steps of a door close by, approached our
+disconsolate group and suggested to Miss H——, one of
+our party, that we should inquire of the dervishes
+concerning the fate of Ralph.</p>
+
+<p>“And what can the dervishes know about my dog?”
+said I, in no mood to joke, ridiculous as the proposition
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>“The holy men know all, Kyrea (Madam),” said she,
+somewhat mysteriously. “Last week I was robbed of
+my new satin pelisse, that my son had just brought me
+from Broussa, and, as you all see, I have recovered it
+and have it on my back now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed? Then the holy men have also managed to
+metamorphose your new pelisse into an old one by all
+appearances,” said one of the gentlemen who accompanied
+us, pointing as he spoke to a large rent in the
+back, which had been clumsily repaired with pins.</p>
+
+<p>“And that is just the most wonderful part of the whole
+story,” quietly answered the Phanariote, not in the least
+disconcerted. “They showed me in the shining circle
+the quarter of the town, the house, and even the room in
+which the Jew who had stolen my pelisse was just about
+to rip it up and cut it into pieces. My son and I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+barely time to run over to the Kalindjikoulosek quarter,
+and to save my property. We caught the thief in the
+very act, and we both recognized him as the man shown
+to us by the dervishes in the magic moon. He confessed
+the theft and is now in prison.”</p>
+
+<p>Although none of us had the least comprehension of
+what she meant by the magic moon and the shining
+circle, and were all thoroughly mystified by her account
+of the divining powers of the “holy men,” we still felt
+somehow satisfied from her manner that the story was
+not altogether a fabrication, and since she had at all
+events apparently succeeded in recovering her property
+through being somehow assisted by the dervishes, we
+determined to go the following morning and see for
+ourselves, for what had helped her might help us
+likewise.</p>
+
+<p>The monotonous cry of the Muezzins from the tops of
+the minarets had just proclaimed the hour of noon as
+we, descending from the heights of Pera to the port of
+Galata, with difficulty managed to elbow our way through
+the unsavory crowds of the commercial quarter of the
+town. Before we reached the docks we had been half
+deafened by the shouts and incessant ear-piercing cries
+and the Babel-like confusion of tongues. In this part of
+the city it is useless to expect to be guided by either
+house numbers, or names of streets. The location of
+any desired place is indicated by its proximity to some
+other more conspicuous building, such as a mosque, bath
+or European shop; for the rest, one has to trust to Allah
+and his prophet.</p>
+
+<p>It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that we
+finally discovered the British ship-chandler’s store, at
+the rear of which we were to find the place of our destination.
+Our hotel guide was as ignorant of the dervishes’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+abode as we were ourselves; but at last a small Greek, in
+all the simplicity of primitive undress, consented for a
+modest copper backsheesh to lead us to the dancers.</p>
+
+<p>When we arrived we were shown into a vast and
+gloomy hall that looked like a deserted stable. It was
+long and narrow, the floor was thickly strewn with sand
+as in a riding school, and it was lighted only by small
+windows placed at some height from the ground. The
+dervishes had finished their morning performances, and
+were evidently resting from their exhausting labors.
+They looked completely prostrated, some lying about in
+corners, others sitting on their heels staring vacantly
+into space, engaged, as we were informed, in meditation
+on their invisible deity. They appeared to have lost all
+power of sight and hearing, for none of them responded
+to our questions until a great gaunt figure, wearing a tall
+cap that made him look at least seven feet high, emerged
+from an obscure corner. Informing us that he was their
+chief, the giant gave us to understand that the saintly
+brethren, being in the habit of receiving orders for additional
+ceremonies from Allah himself, must on no account
+be disturbed. But when our interpreter had
+explained to him the object of our visit, which concerned
+himself alone, as he was the sole custodian of the
+“divining rod,” his objections vanished and he extended
+his hand for alms. Upon being gratified, he intimated
+that only two of our party could be admitted at one
+time into the confidence of the future, and led the way,
+followed by Miss H—— and myself.</p>
+
+<p>Plunging after him into what seemed to be a half
+subterranean passage, we were led to the foot of a tall
+ladder leading to a chamber under the roof. We
+scrambled up after our guide, and at the top we found
+ourselves in a wretched garret of moderate size, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+bare walls and destitute of furniture. The floor was
+carpeted with a thick layer of dust, and cobwebs festooned
+the walls in neglected confusion. In the corner we saw
+something that I at first mistook for a bundle of old rags;
+but the heap presently moved and got on its legs, advanced
+to the middle of the room and stood before us, the
+most extraordinary looking creature that I ever beheld.
+Its sex was female, but whether she was a woman or
+child it was impossible to decide. She was a hideous-looking
+dwarf, with an enormous head, the shoulders of
+a grenadier, with a waist in proportion; the whole
+supported by two short, lean, spider-like legs that seemed
+unequal to the task of bearing the weight of the monstrous
+body. She had a grinning countenance like the face of a
+satyr, and it was ornamented with letters and signs from
+the Koran painted in bright yellow. On her forehead
+was a blood-red crescent; her head was crowned with a
+dusty tarbouche, or fez; her legs were arrayed in large
+Turkish trousers, and some dirty white muslin wrapped
+round her body barely sufficed to conceal its hideous
+deformities. This creature rather let herself drop than
+sat down in the middle of the floor, and as her weight
+descended on the rickety boards it sent up a cloud of
+dust that set us coughing and sneezing. This was the
+famous Tatmos known as the Damascus oracle!</p>
+
+<p>Without losing time in idle talk, the dervish produced
+a piece of chalk, and traced around the girl a circle
+about six feet in diameter. Fetching from behind the
+door twelve small copper lamps which he filled with
+some dark liquid from a small bottle which he drew
+from his bosom, he placed them symmetrically around
+the magic circle. He then broke a chip of wood from a
+panel of the half ruined door, which bore the marks of
+many a similar depredation, and, holding the chip<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+between his thumb and finger he began blowing on it at
+regular intervals, alternating the blowing with mutterings
+of some kind of weird incantation, till suddenly,
+and without any apparent cause for its ignition, there
+appeared a spark on the chip and it blazed up like a dry
+match. The dervish then lit the twelve lamps at this
+self-generated flame.</p>
+
+<p>During this process, Tatmos, who had sat till then
+altogether unconcerned and motionless, removed her
+yellow slippers from her naked feet, and throwing them
+into a corner, disclosed as an additional beauty, a sixth toe
+on each deformed foot. The dervish now reached over
+into the circle and seizing the dwarf’s ankles gave her a
+jerk, as if he had been lifting a bag of corn, and raised
+her clear off the ground, then, stepping back a pace, held
+her head downward. He shook her as one might a sack
+to pack its contents, the motion being regular and easy.
+He then swung her to and fro like a pendulum until the
+necessary momentum was acquired, when letting go one
+foot, and seizing the other with both hands, he made a
+powerful muscular effort and whirled her round in the
+air as if she had been an Indian club.</p>
+
+<p>My companion had shrunk back in alarm to the
+farthest corner. Round and round the dervish swung
+his living burden, she remaining perfectly passive. The
+motion increased in rapidity until the eye could hardly
+follow the body in its circuit. This continued for perhaps
+two or three minutes, until, gradually slackening
+the motion, he at length stopped it altogether, and in an
+instant had landed the girl on her knees in the middle
+of the lamp-lit circle. Such was the Eastern mode of
+mesmerization as practised among the dervishes.</p>
+
+<p>And now the dwarf seemed entirely oblivious of external
+objects and in a deep trance. Her head and jaw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+dropped on her chest, her eyes were glazed and staring,
+and altogether her appearance was even more hideous
+than before. The dervish then carefully closed the
+shutters of the only window, and we should have been
+in total obscurity, but that there was a hole bored in it,
+through which entered a bright ray of sunlight that shot
+through the darkened room and shone upon the girl.
+He arranged her drooping head so that the ray should
+fall upon the crown, after which motioning us to remain
+silent, he folded his arms upon his bosom, and, fixing his
+gaze upon the bright spot, became as motionless as a
+stone image. I, too, riveted my eyes on the same spot,
+wondering what was to happen next, and how all this
+strange ceremony was to help me to find Ralph.</p>
+
+<p>By degrees, the bright patch, as if it had drawn
+through the sunbeam a greater splendor from without
+and condensed it within its own area, shaped itself into
+a brilliant star, sending out rays in every direction as
+from a focus.</p>
+
+<p>A curious optical effect then occurred: the room, which
+had been previously partially lighted by the sunbeam,
+grew darker and darker as the star increased in radiance,
+until we found ourselves in an Egyptian gloom. The
+star twinkled, trembled and turned, at first with a slow
+gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its
+circumference at every rotation until it formed a brilliant
+disk, and we no longer saw the dwarf, who seemed
+absorbed into its light. Having gradually attained an
+extremely rapid velocity, as the girl had done when
+whirled by the dervish, the motion began to decrease
+and finally merged into a feeble vibration, like the
+shimmer of moonbeams on rippling water. Then it
+flickered for a moment longer, emitted a few last flashes,
+and assuming the density and iridescence of an immense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+opal, it remained motionless. The disk now radiated a
+moon-like luster, soft and silvery, but instead of illuminating
+the garret, it seemed only to intensify the darkness.
+The edge of the circle was not penumbrous, but on the
+contrary sharply defined like that of a silver shield.</p>
+
+<p>All being now ready, the dervish without uttering a
+word, or removing his gaze from the disk, stretched out
+a hand, and taking hold of mine, he drew me to his side
+and pointed to the luminous shield. Looking at the
+place indicated, we saw large patches appear like those
+on the moon. These gradually formed themselves into
+figures that began moving about in high relief in their
+natural colors. They neither appeared like a photograph
+nor an engraving; still less like the reflection of
+images on a mirror, but as if the disk were a cameo, and
+they were raised above its surface and then endowed with
+life and motion. To my astonishment and my friend’s
+consternation, we recognized the bridge leading from
+Galata to Stamboul spanning the Golden Horn from the
+new to the old city. There were the people hurrying
+to and fro, steamers and gay caiques gliding on the blue
+Bosphorus, the many colored buildings, villas and
+palaces reflected in the water; and the whole picture
+illuminated by the noon-day sun. It passed like a
+panorama, but so vivid was the impression that we could
+not tell whether it or ourselves were in motion. All was
+bustle and life, but not a sound broke the oppressive
+stillness. It was noiseless as a dream. It was a phantom
+picture. Street after street and quarter after quarter
+succeeded one another; there was the bazaar, with its
+narrow, roofed passages, the small shops on either side,
+the coffee houses with gravely smoking Turks; and as
+either they glided past us or we past them, one of the
+smokers upset the narghilé and coffee of another, and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+volley of soundless invectives caused us great amusement.
+So we traveled with the picture until we came to a large
+building that I recognized as the palace of the Minister
+of Finance. In a ditch behind the house, and close to a
+mosque, lying in a pool of mud with his silken coat all
+bedraggled, lay my poor Ralph! Panting and crouching
+down as if exhausted, he seemed to be in a dying condition;
+and near him were gathered some sorry-looking
+curs who lay blinking in the sun and snapping at the
+flies!</p>
+
+<p>I had seen all that I desired, although I had not
+breathed a word about the dog to the dervish, and had
+come more out of curiosity than with the idea of any
+success. I was impatient to leave at once and recover
+Ralph, but as my companion besought me to remain a
+little while longer, I reluctantly consented. The scene
+faded away and Miss H—— placed herself in turn by
+the side of the dervish.</p>
+
+<p>“I will think of <em>him</em>,” she whispered in my ear with
+the eager tone that young ladies generally assume when
+talking of the worshipped <em>him</em>.</p>
+
+<p>There is a long stretch of sand and a blue sea with
+white waves dancing in the sun, and a great steamer is
+ploughing her way along past a desolate shore, leaving
+a milky track behind her. The deck is full of life, the
+men are busy forward, the cook with white cap and
+apron is coming out of the galley, uniformed officers are
+moving about, passengers fill the quarter-deck, lounging,
+flirting or reading, and a young man we both recognize
+comes forward and leans over the taffrail. It is—<em>him</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Miss H—— gives a little gasp, blushes and smiles,
+and concentrates her thoughts again. The picture of
+the steamer vanishes; the magic moon remains for a few
+moments blank. But new spots appear on its luminous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+face, we see a library slowly emerging from its depths—a
+library with green carpet and hangings, and book-shelves
+round the sides of the room. Seated in an arm-chair
+at a table under a hanging lamp, is an old gentleman
+writing. His gray hair is brushed back from his forehead,
+his face is smooth-shaven and his countenance has an
+expression of benignity.</p>
+
+<p>The dervish made an hasty motion to enjoin silence;
+the light on the disk quivers, but resumes its steady
+brilliancy, and again its surface is imageless for a second.</p>
+
+<p>We are back in Constantinople now and out of the
+pearly depths of the shield forms our own apartment in
+the hotel. There are our papers and books on the
+bureau, my friend’s traveling hat in a corner, her
+ribbons hanging on the glass, and lying on the bed the
+very dress she had changed when starting out on our
+expedition. No detail was lacking to make the identification
+complete; and as if to prove that we were not
+seeing something conjured up in our own imagination,
+there lay upon the dressing-table two unopened letters,
+the handwriting on which was clearly recognized by my
+friend. They were from a very dear relative of hers,
+from whom she had expected to hear when in Athens,
+but had been disappointed. The scene faded away and
+we now saw her brother’s room with himself lying upon
+the lounge, and a servant bathing his head, whence, to
+our horror, blood was trickling. We had left the boy in
+perfect health but an hour before; and upon seeing this
+picture my companion uttered a cry of alarm, and
+seizing me by the hand dragged me to the door. We rejoined
+our guide and friends in the long hall and hurried
+back to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Young H—— had fallen downstairs and cut his forehead
+rather badly; in our room, on the dressing-table<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+were the two letters which had arrived in our absence.
+They had been forwarded from Athens. Ordering a
+carriage, I at once drove to the Ministry of Finance, and
+alighting with the guide, hurriedly made for the ditch I
+had seen for the first time in the shining disk! In the
+middle of the pool, badly mangled, half-famished, but
+still alive, lay my beautiful spaniel Ralph, and near
+him were the blinking curs, unconcernedly snapping
+at the flies.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="FROM_THE_POLAR_LANDS" id="FROM_THE_POLAR_LANDS"></a>FROM THE POLAR LANDS
+<br />
+<span class="stl">(A Christmas Story)</span></h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p095cap.jpg" width="122" height="242" alt="J" title="J" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Just</span> a year ago, during the Christmas
+holidays, a numerous society had
+gathered in the country house, or
+rather the old hereditary castle, of a
+wealthy landowner in Finland. Many
+were the remains in it of our forefathers’
+hospitable way of living; and
+many the medieval customs preserved,
+founded on traditions and
+superstitions, semi-Finnish and semi-Russian,
+the latter imported into it by
+its female proprietors from the shores
+of the Neva. Christmas trees were
+being prepared and implements for
+divination were being made ready. For, in that old
+castle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous
+ancestors and knights and ladies, old deserted turrets,
+with bastions and Gothic windows; mysterious somber
+alleys, and dark and endless cellars, easily transformed
+into subterranean passages and caves, ghostly prison
+cells, haunted by the restless phantoms of the heroes of
+local legends. In short, the old Manor offered every
+commodity for romantic horrors. But alas! this once
+they serve for nought; in the present narrative these dear
+old horrors play no such part as they otherwise might.</p>
+
+<p>Its chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man—let
+us call him Erkler. Yes; Dr. Erkler, professor of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+medicine, half-German through his father, a full-blown
+Russian on his mother’s side and by education; and one
+who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.
+Nevertheless, very extraordinary things happened with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Erkler, as it turned out was a great traveler, who by
+his own choice had accompanied one of the most famous
+explorers on his journeys round the world. More than
+once they had both seen death face to face from sunstrokes
+under the Tropics, from cold in the Polar
+Regions. All this notwithstanding, the doctor spoke
+with a never-abating enthusiasm about their “winterings”
+in Greenland and Novaya Zemla, and about the
+desert plains in Australia, where he lunched off a kangaroo
+and dined off an emu, and almost perished of thirst
+during the passage through a waterless track, which it
+took them forty hours to cross.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” he used to remark, “I have experienced almost
+everything, save what you would describe as <em>supernatural</em>....
+This, of course if we throw out of account a certain
+extraordinary event in my life—a man I met, of
+whom I will tell you just now—and its ... indeed,
+rather strange, I may add quite <em>inexplicable</em>, results.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud demand that he should explain
+himself; and the doctor, forced to yield, began his
+narrative.</p>
+
+<p>“In 1878 we were compelled to winter on the north-western
+coast of Spitsbergen. We had been attempting
+to find our way during the short summer to the pole;
+but, as usual, the attempt had proved a failure, owing to
+the icebergs, and, after several such fruitless endeavors,
+we had to give it up. No sooner had we settled than the
+polar night descended upon us, our steamers got wedged
+in and frozen between the blocks of ice in the Gulf of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+Mussel, and we found ourselves cut off for eight long
+months from the rest of the living world.... I
+confess I, for one, felt it terribly at first. We became
+especially discouraged when one stormy night the snow
+hurricane scattered a mass of materials prepared for our
+winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deer from
+our herd. Starvation in prospect is no incentive to good
+humor; and with the deer we had lost the best <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plat de
+résistance</i> against polar frosts, human organisms demanding
+in that climate an increase of heating and solid food.
+However, we were finally reconciled to our loss, and
+even got accustomed to the local and in reality more
+nutritious food—seals, and seal-grease. Our men from
+the remnants of our lumber built a house neatly divided
+into two compartments, one for our three professors and
+myself, and the other for themselves; and, a few wooden
+sheds being constructed for meteorological, astronomical
+and magnetic purposes, we even added a protecting
+stable for the few remaining deer. And then began the
+monotonous series of dawnless nights and days, hardly
+distinguishable one from the other, except through dark-gray
+shadows. At times, the “blues” we got into were
+fearful! We had contemplated sending two of our three
+steamers home in September, but the premature and unforeseen
+formation of ice walls round them had thwarted
+our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands,
+we had to economize still more with our meager provisions,
+fuel and light. Lamps were used only for
+scientific purposes: the rest of the time we had to
+content ourselves with God’s light—the moon and the
+Aurora Borealis.... But how describe these glorious,
+incomparable northern lights! Rings, arrows, gigantic
+conflagrations of accurately divided rays of the most
+vivid and varied colors. The November moonlight nights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow
+and the frozen rocks was most striking. These were
+fairy nights.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, one such night—it may have been one such
+<em>day</em>, for all I know, as from the end of November to
+about the middle of March we had no twilights at all, to
+distinguish the one from the other—we suddenly espied
+in the play of colored beams, which were then throwing
+a golden rosy hue on the snow plains, a dark moving
+spot.... It grew, and seemed to scatter as it approached
+nearer to us. What did this mean?... It
+looked like a herd of cattle, or a group of living men,
+trotting over the snowy wilderness.... But animals
+there were white like everything else. What then was
+this?... human beings?...</p>
+
+<p>“We could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men
+was approaching our dwelling. It turned out to be
+about fifty seal-hunters, guided by Matiliss, a well-known
+veteran mariner, from Norway. They had been caught
+by the icebergs, just as we had been.</p>
+
+<p>“‘How did you know that we were here?’ we asked.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Old Johan, this very same old party, showed us the
+way’—they answered, pointing to a venerable-looking
+old man with snow-white locks.</p>
+
+<p>“In sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide
+far better to have sat at home over his fire than to have
+been seal-hunting in polar lands with younger men.
+And we told them so, still wondering how he came to
+learn of our presence in this kingdom of white bears.
+At this Matiliss and his companions smiled, assuring us
+that ‘old Johan’ <em>knew all</em>. They remarked that we must
+be novices in polar borderlands, since we were ignorant
+of Johan’s personality and could still wonder at anything
+said of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“‘It is nigh forty-five years,’ said the chief hunter,
+‘that I have been catching seals in the Polar Seas, and
+as far as my personal remembrance goes, I have always
+known him, and just as he is now, an old, white-bearded
+man. And so far back as in the days when I used to go
+to sea, as a small boy with my father, my dad used to
+tell me the same of old Johan, and he added that his
+own father and grandfather too, had known Johan in
+their days of boyhood, none of them having ever seen
+him otherwise than white as our snows. And, as our forefathers
+nicknamed him “the white-haired all-knower,”
+thus do we, the seal hunters, call him, to this day.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Would you make us believe he is two hundred years
+old?’—we laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Some of our sailors crowding round the white-haired
+phenomenon, plied him with questions.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Grandfather! answer us, how old are you?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as
+long as God has decreed me to. As to my years, I never
+counted them.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘And how did you know, grandfather, that we were
+wintering in this place?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘God guided me. How I learned it I do not know;
+save that I knew—I knew it.’”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_ENSOULED_VIOLIN" id="THE_ENSOULED_VIOLIN"></a>THE ENSOULED VIOLIN</h2>
+
+
+<h3 class="fst">I</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p103cap.jpg" width="136" height="256" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="upper">In</span> the year 1828, an old German, a
+music teacher, came to Paris with
+his pupil and settled unostentatiously
+in one of the quiet faubourgs
+of the metropolis. The first rejoiced
+in the name of Samuel Klaus; the
+second answered to the more poetical
+appellation of Franz Stenio.
+The younger man was a violinist,
+gifted, as rumor went, with extraordinary,
+almost miraculous talent.
+Yet as he was poor and had not
+hitherto made a name for himself in
+Europe, he remained for several
+years in the capital of France—the heart and pulse of
+capricious continental fashion—unknown and unappreciated.
+Franz was a Styrian by birth, and, at the time
+of the event to be presently described, he was a young
+man considerably under thirty. A philosopher and a
+dreamer by nature, imbued with all the mystic oddities
+of true genius, he reminded one of some of the heroes in
+Hoffmann’s <cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Contes Fantastiques</cite>. His earlier existence
+had been a very unusual, in fact, quite an eccentric one,
+and its history must be briefly told—for the better
+understanding of the present story.</p>
+
+<p>Born of very pious country people, in a quiet burg<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+among the Styrian Alps; nursed “by the native gnomes
+who watched over his cradle”; growing up in the weird
+atmosphere of the ghouls and vampires who play such a
+prominent part in the household of every Styrian and
+Slavonian in Southern Austria; educated later, as a
+student, in the shadow of the old Rhenish castles of
+Germany; Franz from his childhood had passed through
+every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called
+“supernatural.” He had also studied at one time the
+“occult arts” with an enthusiastic disciple of Paracelsus
+and Kunrath; alchemy had few theoretical secrets for
+him; and he had dabbled in “ceremonial magic” and
+“sorcery” with some Hungarian Tziganes. Yet he
+loved above all else music, and above music—his violin.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twenty-two he suddenly gave up his
+practical studies in the occult, and from that day,
+though as devoted as ever in thought to the beautiful
+Grecian Gods, he surrendered himself entirely to his art.
+Of his classic studies he had retained only that which
+related to the muses—Euterpe especially, at whose altar
+he worshipped—and Orpheus whose magic lyre he tried
+to emulate with his violin. Except his dreamy belief in
+the nymphs and the sirens, on account probably of the
+double relationship of the latter to the muses through
+Calliope and Orpheus, he was interested but little in the
+matters of this sublunary world. All his aspirations
+mounted, like incense, with the wave of the heavenly
+harmony that he drew from his instrument, to a higher
+and a nobler sphere. He dreamed awake, and lived a
+real though an enchanted life only during those hours
+when his magic bow carried him along the wave of sound
+to the Pagan Olympus, to the feet of Euterpe. A strange
+child he had ever been in his own home, where tales of
+magic and witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+a still stranger boy he had become, until finally he had
+blossomed into manhood, without one single characteristic
+of youth. Never had a fair face attracted his
+attention; not for one moment had his thoughts turned
+from his solitary studies to a life beyond that of a mystic
+Bohemian. Content with his own company, he had
+thus passed the best years of his youth and manhood
+with his violin for his chief idol, and with the Gods and
+Goddesses of old Greece for his audience, in perfect
+ignorance of practical life. His whole existence had
+been one long day of dreams, of melody and sunlight,
+and he had never felt any other aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>How useless, but oh, how glorious those dreams! how
+vivid! and why should he desire any better fate? Was
+he not all that he wanted to be, transformed in a second
+of thought into one or another hero; from Orpheus, who
+held all nature breathless, to the urchin who piped away
+under the plane tree to the naiads of Callirrhoe’s crystal
+fountain? Did not the swift-footed nymphs frolic at
+his beck and call to the sound of the magic flute of the
+Arcadian Shepherd—who was himself? Behold, the
+Goddess of Love and Beauty herself descending from on
+high, attracted by the sweet-voiced notes of his violin!...
+Yet there came a time when he preferred Syrinx
+to Aphrodite—not as the fair nymph pursued by Pan,
+but after her transformation by the merciful Gods into
+the reed out of which the frustrated God of the Shepherds
+had made his magic pipe. For also, with time, ambition
+grows and is rarely satisfied. When he tried to emulate
+on his violin the enchanting sounds that resounded in
+his mind, the whole of Parnassus kept silent under the
+spell, or joined in heavenly chorus; but the audience he
+finally craved was composed of more than the Gods sung
+by Hesiod, verily of the most appreciative <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mélomanes</i> of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+European capitals. He felt jealous of the magic pipe,
+and would fain have had it at his command.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that I could allure a nymph into my beloved
+violin!”—he often cried, after awakening from one of his
+day-dreams. “Oh, that I could only span in spirit flight
+the abyss of Time! Oh, that I could find myself for one
+short day a partaker of the secret arts of the Gods, a God
+myself, in the sight and hearing of enraptured humanity;
+and, having learned the mystery of the lyre of Orpheus,
+or secured within my violin a siren, thereby benefit
+mortals to my own glory!”</p>
+
+<p>Thus, having for long years dreamed in the company
+of the Gods of his fancy, he now took to dreaming of
+the transitory glories of fame upon this earth. But at
+this time he was suddenly called home by his widowed
+mother from one of the German universities where he
+had lived for the last year or two. This was an event
+which brought his plans to an end, at least so far as the
+immediate future was concerned, for he had hitherto
+drawn upon her alone for his meager pittance, and his
+means were not sufficient for an independent life outside
+his native place.</p>
+
+<p>His return had a very unexpected result. His mother,
+whose only love he was on earth, died soon after she had
+welcomed her Benjamin back; and the good wives of the
+burg exercised their swift tongues for many a month
+after as to the real causes of that death.</p>
+
+<p>Frau Stenio, before Franz’s return, was a healthy,
+buxom, middle-aged body, strong and hearty. She was
+a pious and a God-fearing soul too, who had never
+failed in saying her prayers, nor had missed an early
+mass for years during his absence. On the first Sunday
+after her son had settled at home—a day that she had
+been longing for and had anticipated for months in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+joyous visions, in which she saw him kneeling by her
+side in the little church on the hill—she called him from
+the foot of the stairs. The hour had come when her
+pious dream was to be realized, and she was waiting for
+him, carefully wiping the dust from the prayer-book he
+had used in his boyhood. But instead of Franz, it was
+his violin that responded to her call, mixing its sonorous
+voice with the rather cracked tones of the peal of the
+merry Sunday bells. The fond mother was somewhat
+shocked at hearing the prayer-inspiring sounds drowned
+by the weird, fantastic notes of the “Dance of the
+Witches”; they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking.
+But she almost fainted upon hearing the definite
+refusal of her well-beloved son to go to church. He
+never went to church, he coolly remarked. It was loss
+of time; besides which, the loud peals of the old church
+organ jarred on his nerves. Nothing should induce him
+to submit to the torture of listening to that cracked
+organ. He was firm and nothing could move him. To
+her supplications and remonstrances he put an end by
+offering to play for her a “Hymn to the Sun” he had
+just composed.</p>
+
+<p>From that memorable Sunday morning, Frau Stenio
+lost her usual serenity of mind. She hastened to lay
+her sorrows and seek for consolation at the foot of the
+confessional; but that which she heard in response from
+the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated
+soul with dismay and almost with despair. A feeling of
+fear, a sense of profound terror, which soon became a
+chronic state with her, pursued her from that moment;
+her nights became disturbed and sleepless, her days
+passed in prayer and lamentations. In her maternal
+anxiety for the salvation of her beloved son’s soul, and
+for his <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">post mortem</i> welfare, she made a series of rash<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+vows. Finding that neither the Latin petition to the
+Mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser,
+nor yet the humble supplications in German, addressed
+by herself to every saint she had reason to believe was
+residing in Paradise, worked the desired effect, she took
+to pilgrimages to distant shrines. During one of these
+journeys to a holy chapel situated high up in the mountains,
+she caught cold, amidst the glaciers of the Tyrol,
+and redescended only to take to a sick bed, from which
+she arose no more. Frau Stenio’s vow had led her, in
+one sense, to the desired result. The poor woman was
+now given an opportunity of seeking out in <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">propria persona</i>
+the saints she had believed in so well, and of
+pleading face to face for the recreant son, who refused
+adherence to them and to the Church, scoffed at monk
+and confessional, and held the organ in such horror.</p>
+
+<p>Franz sincerely lamented his mother’s death. Unaware
+of being the indirect cause of it, he felt no remorse;
+but selling the modest household goods and
+chattels, light in purse and heart, he resolved to travel
+on foot for a year or two, before settling down to any
+definite profession.</p>
+
+<p>A hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe, and to
+try his luck in France, lurked at the bottom of this
+traveling project, but his Bohemian habits of life were
+too strong to be abruptly abandoned. He placed his
+small capital with a banker for a rainy day, and started
+on his pedestrian journey <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">via</i> Germany and Austria.
+His violin paid for his board and lodging in the inns
+and farms on his way, and he passed his days in the
+green fields and in the solemn silent woods, face to face
+with Nature, dreaming all the time as usual with his
+eyes open. During the three months of his pleasant
+travels to and fro, he never descended for one moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+from Parnassus; but, as an alchemist transmutes lead
+into gold, so he transformed everything on his way into
+a song of Hesiod or Anacreon. Every evening, while
+fiddling for his supper and bed, whether on a green
+lawn or in the hall of a rustic inn, his fancy changed
+the whole scene for him. Village swains and maidens
+became transfigured into Arcadian shepherds and
+nymphs. The sand-covered floor was now a green
+sward; the uncouth couples spinning round in a
+measured waltz with the wild grace of tamed bears
+became priests and priestesses of Terpsichore; the bulky,
+cherry-cheeked and blue-eyed daughters of rural Germany
+were the Hesperides circling around the trees
+laden with the golden apples. Nor did the melodious
+strains of the Arcadian demi-gods piping on their
+syrinxes, and audible but to his own enchanted ear,
+vanish with the dawn. For no sooner was the curtain
+of sleep raised from his eyes than he would sally forth
+into a new magic realm of day-dreams. On his way to
+some dark and solemn pine-forest, he played incessantly,
+to himself and to everything else. He fiddled to the
+green hill, and forthwith the mountain and the moss-covered
+rocks moved forward to hear him the better, as
+they had done at the sound of the Orphean lyre. He
+fiddled to the merry-voiced brook, to the hurrying river,
+and both slackened their speed and stopped their waves,
+and, becoming silent, seemed to listen to him in an entranced
+rapture. Even the long-legged stork who stood
+meditatively on one leg on the thatched top of the rustic
+mill, gravely resolving unto himself the problem of his
+too-long existence, sent out after him a long and strident
+cry, screeching, “Art thou Orpheus himself, O Stenio?”</p>
+
+<p>It was a period of full bliss, of a daily and almost
+hourly exaltation. The last words of his dying mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+whispering to him of the horrors of eternal condemnation,
+had left him unaffected, and the only vision her warning
+evoked in him was that of Pluto. By a ready association
+of ideas, he saw the lord of the dark nether kingdom
+greeting him as he had greeted the husband of Eurydice
+before him. Charmed with the magic sounds of his
+violin, the wheel of Ixion was at a standstill once more,
+thus affording relief to the wretched seducer of Juno,
+and giving the lie to those who claim eternity for the
+duration of the punishment of condemned sinners. He
+perceived Tantalus forgetting his never-ceasing thirst,
+and smacking his lips as he drank in the heaven-born
+melody; the stone of Sisyphus becoming motionless, the
+Furies themselves smiling on him, and the sovereign of
+the gloomy regions delighted, and awarding preference
+to his violin over the lyre of Orpheus. Taken <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au sérieux</i>,
+mythology thus seems a decided antidote to fear, in the
+face of theological threats, especially when strengthened
+with an insane and passionate love of music; with Franz,
+Euterpe proved always victorious in every contest, aye,
+even with Hell itself!</p>
+
+<p>But there is an end to everything, and very soon
+Franz had to give up uninterrupted dreaming. He had
+reached the university town where dwelt his old violin
+teacher, Samuel Klaus. When this antiquated musician
+found that his beloved and favorite pupil, Franz, had
+been left poor in purse and still poorer in earthly affections,
+he felt his strong attachment to the boy awaken
+with tenfold force. He took Franz to his heart, and
+forthwith adopted him as his son.</p>
+
+<p>The old teacher reminded people of one of those
+grotesque figures which look as if they had just stepped
+out of some medieval panel. And yet Klaus, with his
+fantastic <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">allures</i> of a night-goblin, had the most loving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+heart, as tender as that of a woman, and the self-sacrificing
+nature of an old Christian martyr. When
+Franz had briefly narrated to him the history of his
+last few years, the professor took him by the hand, and
+leading him into his study simply said:</p>
+
+<p>“Stop with me, and put an end to your Bohemian life.
+Make yourself famous. I am old and childless and will
+be your father. Let us live together and forget all save
+fame.”</p>
+
+<p>And forthwith he offered to proceed with Franz to
+Paris, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">via</i> several large German cities, where they would
+stop to give concerts.</p>
+
+<p>In a few days Klaus succeeded in making Franz forget
+his vagrant life and its artistic independence, and reawakened
+in his pupil his now dormant ambition and
+desire for worldly fame. Hitherto, since his mother’s
+death, he had been content to received applause only
+from the Gods and Goddesses who inhabited his vivid
+fancy; now he began to crave once more for the admiration
+of mortals. Under the clever and careful training
+of old Klaus his remarkable talent gained in strength
+and powerful charm with every day, and his reputation
+grew and expanded with every city and town wherein
+he made himself heard. His ambition was being rapidly
+realized; the presiding genii of various musical centers
+to whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed
+him <em>the one</em> violinist of the day, and the public
+declared loudly that he stood unrivaled by any one
+whom they had ever heard. These laudations very soon
+made both master and pupil completely lose their heads.</p>
+
+<p>But Paris was less ready with such appreciation.
+Paris makes reputations for itself, and will take none on
+faith. They had been living in it for almost three years,
+and were still climbing with difficulty the artist’s Calvary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+when an event occurred which put an end even to their
+most modest expectations. The first arrival of Niccolo
+Paganini was suddenly heralded, and threw Lutetia into
+a convulsion of expectation. The unparalleled artist
+arrived, and—all Paris fell at once at his feet.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Now</span> it is a well known fact that a superstition born in
+the dark days of medieval superstition, and surviving
+almost to the middle of the present century, attributed
+all such abnormal, out-of-the-way talent as that of
+Paganini to “supernatural” agency. Every great and
+marvelous artist had been accused in his day of dealings
+with the devil. A few instances will suffice to refresh
+the reader’s memory.</p>
+
+<p>Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the
+seventeenth century, was denounced as one who got his
+best inspirations from the Evil One, with whom he was,
+it was said, in regular league. This accusation was, of
+course, due to the almost magical impression he produced
+upon his audiences. His inspired performance on
+the violin secured for him in his native country the title
+of “Master of Nations.” The <cite>Sonate du Diable</cite>, also
+called “Tartini’s Dream”—as everyone who has heard
+it will be ready to testify—is the most weird melody
+ever heard or invented: hence, the marvelous composition
+has become the source of endless legends. Nor
+were they entirely baseless, since it was he, himself, who
+was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed
+to having written it on awakening from a dream, in
+which he had heard his sonata performed by Satan, for
+his benefit, and in consequence of a bargain made with
+his infernal majesty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Several famous singers, even, whose exceptional voices
+struck the hearers with superstitious admiration, have
+not escaped a like accusation. Pasta’s splendid voice
+was attributed in her day to the fact that, three months
+before her birth, the diva’s mother was carried during a
+trance to heaven, and there treated to a vocal concert
+of seraphs. Malibran was indebted for her voice to
+St. Cecelia, while others said she owed it to a demon who
+watched over her cradle and sung the baby to sleep.
+Finally, Paganini—the unrivaled performer, the mean
+Italian, who like Dryden’s Jubal striking on the “chorded
+shell” forced the throngs that followed him to worship
+the divine sounds produced, and made people say that
+“less than a God could not dwell within the hollow of
+his violin”—Paganini left a legend too.</p>
+
+<p>The almost supernatural art of the greatest violin
+player that the world has ever known was often speculated
+upon, never understood. The effect produced by
+him on his audience was literally marvelous, overpowering.
+The great Rossini is said to have wept like a
+sentimental German maiden on hearing him play for
+the first time. The Princess Elisa of Lucca, a sister of
+the great Napoleon, in whose service Paganini was, as
+director of her private orchestra, for a long time was
+unable to hear him play without fainting. In women he
+produced nervous fits and hysterics at his will; stout-hearted
+men he drove to frenzy. He changed cowards
+into heroes and made the bravest soldiers feel like so
+many nervous school-girls. Is it to be wondered at, then,
+that hundreds of weird tales circulated for long years
+about and around the mysterious Genoese, that modern
+Orpheus of Europe? One of these was especially ghastly.
+It was rumored, and was believed by more people than
+would probably like to confess it, that the strings of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+violin were made of <em>human intestines, according to all the
+rules and requirements of the Black Art</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Exaggerated as this idea may seem to some, it has
+nothing impossible in it; and it is more than probable
+that it was this legend that led to the extraordinary
+events which we are about to narrate. Human organs
+are often used by the Eastern Black Magician, so-called,
+and it is an averred fact that some Bengâlî Tântrikas
+(reciters of <i lang="pi" xml:lang="pi">tantras</i>, or “invocations to the demon,” as a
+reverend writer has described them) use human corpses,
+and certain internal and external organs pertaining to
+them, as powerful magical agents for bad purposes.</p>
+
+<p>However this may be, now that the magnetic and
+mesmeric potencies of hypnotism are recognized as facts
+by most physicians, it may be suggested with less danger
+than heretofore that the extraordinary effects of Paganini’s
+violin-playing were not, perhaps, entirely due to
+his talent and genius. The wonder and awe he so easily
+excited were as much caused by his external appearance,
+“which had something weird and demoniacal in it,”
+according to certain of his biographers, as by the inexpressible
+charm of his execution and his remarkable
+mechanical skill. The latter is demonstrated by his
+perfect imitation of the flageolet, and his performance of
+long and magnificent melodies on the G string alone.
+In this performance, which many an artist has tried to
+copy without success, he remains unrivaled to this day.</p>
+
+<p>It is owing to this remarkable appearance of his—termed
+by his friends eccentric, and by his too nervous
+victims, diabolical—that he experienced great difficulties
+in refuting certain ugly rumors. These were credited
+far more easily in his day than they would be now. It
+was whispered throughout Italy, and even in his own
+native town, that Paganini had murdered his wife, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+later on, a mistress, both of whom he had loved
+passionately, and both of whom he had not hesitated to
+sacrifice to his fiendish ambition. He had made himself
+proficient in magic arts, it was asserted, and had succeeded
+thereby in imprisoning the souls of his two
+victims in his violin—his famous Cremona.</p>
+
+<p>It is maintained by the immediate friends of Ernst
+T.&nbsp;W. Hoffmann, the celebrated author of <cite lang="de" xml:lang="de">Die Elixire
+des Teufels</cite>, <cite lang="de" xml:lang="de">Meister Martin</cite>, and other charming and
+mystical tales, that Councillor Crespel, in the <cite>Violin of
+Cremona</cite>, was taken from the legend about Paganini.
+It is, as all who have read it know, the history of a
+celebrated violin, into which the voice and the soul of a
+famous diva, a woman whom Crespel had loved and
+killed, had passed, and to which was added the voice of
+his beloved daughter, Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was this superstition utterly ungrounded, nor was
+Hoffmann to be blamed for adopting it, after he had
+heard Paganini’s playing. The extraordinary facility
+with which the artist drew out of his instrument, not
+only the most unearthly sounds, but positively human
+voices, justified the suspicion. Such effects might well
+have startled an audience and thrown terror into many
+a nervous heart. Add to this the impenetrable mystery
+connected with a certain period of Paganini’s youth, and
+the most wild tales about him must be found in a
+measure justifiable, and even excusable; especially
+among a nation whose ancestors knew the Borgias and
+the Medicis of Black Art fame.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> those pre-telegraphic days, newspapers were
+limited, and the wings of fame had a heavier flight
+than they have now. Franz had hardly heard of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+Paganini; and when he did, he swore he would rival,
+if not eclipse, the Genoese magician. Yes, he would
+either become the most famous of all living violinists, or
+he would break his instrument and put an end to his
+life at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>Old Klaus rejoiced at such a determination. He
+rubbed his hands in glee, and jumping about on his
+lame leg like a crippled satyr, he flattered and incensed
+his pupil, believing himself all the while to be performing
+a sacred duty to the holy and majestic cause of art.</p>
+
+<p>Upon first setting foot in Paris, three years before,
+Franz had all but failed. Musical critics pronounced
+him a rising star, but had all agreed that he required a
+few more years’ practice, before he could hope to carry
+his audiences by storm. Therefore, after a desperate
+study of over two years and uninterrupted preparations,
+the Styrian artist had finally made himself ready for his
+first serious appearance in the great Opera House where
+a public concert before the most exacting critics of the
+old world was to be held; at this critical moment Paganini’s
+arrival in the European metropolis placed an
+obstacle in the way of the realization of his hopes, and
+the old German professor wisely postponed his pupil’s
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">début</i>. At first he had simply smiled at the wild enthusiasm,
+the laudatory hymns sung about the Genoese
+violinist, and the almost superstitious awe with which
+his name was pronounced. But very soon Paganini’s
+name became a burning iron in the hearts of both the
+artists, and a threatening phantom in the mind of Klaus.
+A few days more, and they shuddered at the very
+mention of their great rival, whose success became with
+every night more unprecedented.</p>
+
+<p>The first series of concerts was over, but neither Klaus
+nor Franz had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+and of judging for themselves. So great and so beyond
+their means was the charge for admission, and so small
+the hope of getting a free pass from a brother artist
+justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary
+transactions, that they had to wait for a chance, as did
+so many others. But the day came when neither master
+nor pupil could control their impatience any longer; so
+they pawned their watches, and with the proceeds bought
+two modest seats.</p>
+
+<p>Who can describe the enthusiasm, the triumphs, of
+this famous, and at the same time fatal night! The
+audience was frantic; men wept and women screamed
+and fainted; while both Klaus and Stenio sat looking
+paler than two ghosts. At the first touch of Paganini’s
+magic bow, both Franz and Samuel felt as if the icy
+hand of death had touched them. Carried away by an
+irresistible enthusiasm, which turned into a violent, unearthly
+mental torture, they dared neither look into each
+other’s faces, nor exchange one word during the whole
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight, while the chosen delegates of the Musical
+Societies and the Conservatory of Paris unhitched the
+horses, and dragged the carriage of the grand artist home
+in triumph, the two Germans returned to their modest
+lodging, and it was a pitiful sight to see them. Mournful
+and desperate, they placed themselves in their usual
+seats at the fire-corner, and neither for a while opened
+his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>“Samuel!” at last exclaimed Franz, pale as death
+itself. “Samuel—it remains for us now but to die!...
+Do you hear me?... We are worthless!
+We were two madmen to have ever hoped that any one
+in this world would ever rival ... him.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The name of Paganini stuck in his throat, as in utter
+despair he fell into his arm chair.</p>
+
+<p>The old professor’s wrinkles suddenly became purple.
+His little greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescently as,
+bending toward his pupil, he whispered to him in hoarse
+and broken tones:</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Nein, Nein!</i> Thou art wrong, my Franz! I have
+taught thee, and thou hast learned all of the great art
+that a simple mortal, and a Christian by baptism, can
+learn from another simple mortal. Am I to blame
+because these accursed Italians, in order to reign unequaled
+in the domain of art, have recourse to Satan
+and the diabolical effects of Black Magic?”</p>
+
+<p>Franz turned his eyes upon his old master. There
+was a sinister light burning in those glittering orbs; a
+light telling plainly that, to secure such a power, he,
+too, would not scruple to sell himself, body and soul, to
+the Evil One.</p>
+
+<p>But he said not a word, and, turning his eyes from his
+old master’s face, gazed dreamily at the dying embers.</p>
+
+<p>The same long-forgotten incoherent dreams, which,
+after seeming such realities to him in his younger days,
+had been given up entirely, and had gradually faded
+from his mind, now crowded back into it with the same
+force and vividness as of old. The grimacing shades of
+Ixion, Sisyphus and Tantalus resurrected and stood
+before him, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“What matters hell—in which thou believest not.
+And even if hell there be, it is the hell described by the
+old Greeks, not that of the modern bigots—a locality
+full of conscious shadows, to whom thou canst be a
+second Orpheus.”</p>
+
+<p>Franz felt that he was going mad, and, turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+instinctively, he looked his old master once more right
+in the face. Then his bloodshot eye evaded the gaze of
+Klaus.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind
+of his pupil, or whether he wanted to draw him out, to
+make him speak, and thus to divert his thoughts, must
+remain as hypothetical to the reader as it is to the
+writer. Whatever may have been in his mind, the
+German enthusiast went on, speaking with a feigned
+calmness:</p>
+
+<p>“Franz, my dear boy, I tell you that the art of the
+accursed Italian is not natural; that it is due neither to
+study nor to genius. It never was acquired in the usual,
+natural way. You need not stare at me in that wild
+manner, for what I say is in the mouth of millions of
+people. Listen to what I now tell you, and try to
+understand. You have heard the strange tale whispered
+about the famous Tartini? He died one fine Sabbath
+night strangled by his familiar demon, who had taught
+him how to endow his violin with a human voice, by
+shutting up in it, by means of incantations, the soul of
+a young virgin. Paganini did more. In order to endow
+his instrument with the faculty of emitting human
+sounds, such as sobs, despairing cries, supplications,
+moans of love and fury—in short, the most heart-rending
+notes of the human voice—Paganini became the
+murderer not only of his wife and his mistress, but also
+of a friend, who was more tenderly attached to him than
+any other being on this earth. He then made the four
+chords of his magic violin out of the intestines of his
+last victim. This is the secret of his enchanting talent
+of that overpowering melody, that combination of
+sounds, which you will never be able to master
+unless....”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old man could not finish his sentence. He staggered
+back before the fiendish look of his pupil, and
+covered his face with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an
+expression which reminded Klaus of those of a hyena.
+His pallor was cadaverous. For some time he could not
+speak, but only gasp for breath. At last he slowly
+muttered:</p>
+
+<p>“Are you in earnest?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am, as I hope to help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“And.... And do you really believe that had I
+only the means of obtaining human intestines for strings,
+I could rival Paganini?” asked Franz, after a moment’s
+pause, and casting down his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange
+look of determination upon it, softly answered:</p>
+
+<p>“Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our
+purpose; they must have belonged to some one who had
+loved us well, with an unselfish, holy love. Tartini
+endowed his violin with the life of a virgin; but that
+virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The fiendish
+artist had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he
+managed to catch her last breath as she expired, pronouncing
+his beloved name, and he then transferred
+this breath to his violin. As to Paganini, I have just
+told you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim,
+though, that he murdered him to get possession of his
+intestines.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, for the power of the human voice!” Samuel
+went on, after a brief pause. “What can equal the
+eloquence, the magic spell of the human voice? Do you
+think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this
+great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one
+right into the clutches of him ... who must remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+unnamed at night?” he added, with a sudden return to
+the superstitions of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to
+behold, he left his place, took down his violin from the
+wall where it was hanging, and, with one powerful grasp
+of the chords, he tore them out and flung them into
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were
+hissing upon the coals, where, among the blazing logs,
+they wriggled and curled like so many living snakes.</p>
+
+<p>“By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of
+Circe!” he exclaimed, with foaming mouth and his eyes
+burning like coals; “by the Furies of Hell and Pluto
+himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O Samuel, my
+master, never to touch a violin again until I can string
+it with four human chords. May I be accursed for ever
+and ever if I do!” He fell senseless on the floor, with a
+deep sob, that ended like a funeral wail; old Samuel
+lifted him up as he would have lifted a child, and carried
+him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a
+physician.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> several days after this painful scene Franz was
+very ill, ill almost beyond recovery. The physician
+declared him to be suffering from brain fever and said
+that the worst was to be feared. For nine long days
+the patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was
+nursing him night and day with the solicitude of the
+tenderest mother, was horrified at the work of his own
+hands. For the first time since their acquaintance
+began, the old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his
+pupil, was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+that weird, superstitious, cold, and, at the same time,
+passionate nature; and—he trembled at what he discovered.
+For he saw that which he had failed to
+perceive before—Franz as he was in reality, and not as
+he seemed to superficial observers. Music was the life of
+the young man, and adulation was the air he breathed,
+without which that life became a burden; from the
+chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and
+being, but the applause of men and even of Gods was
+necessary to its support. He saw unveiled before his
+eyes a genuine, artistic, <em>earthly</em> soul, with its divine
+counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses, all fancy
+and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening
+to the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy
+Klaus felt as if he were for the first time in his long
+life exploring a marvelous and untraveled region, a
+human nature not of this world but of some incomplete
+planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than
+once he asked himself whether it would not be doing
+a kindness to his “boy” to let him die before he returned
+to consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on
+such an idea. Franz had bewitched his truly artistic
+nature, and now old Klaus felt as though their two lives
+were inseparably linked together. That he could thus
+feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to
+save Franz, even at the expense of his own old and, as
+he thought, useless life.</p>
+
+<p>The seventh day of the illness brought on a most
+terrible crisis. For twenty-four hours the patient never
+closed his eyes, nor remained for a moment silent; he
+raved continuously during the whole time. His visions
+were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic,
+ghastly figures kept slowly swimming out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+penumbra of his small dark room, in regular and uninterrupted
+procession, and he greeted each by name as
+he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself
+as Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands
+made of human intestines. At the foot of the Caucasian
+Mount the black waters of the river Styx were running....
+They had deserted Arcadia, and were now
+endeavoring to encircle within a seven-fold embrace
+the rock upon which he was suffering....</p>
+
+<p>“Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean
+rock, old man?” he roared into his adopted father’s ear....
+“Listen then, ... its name is ... called
+... Samuel Klaus....”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes!...” the German murmured disconsolately.
+“It is I who killed him, while seeking to console.
+The news of Paganini’s magic arts struck his
+fancy too vividly.... Oh, my poor, poor boy!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The patient broke into a loud and
+discordant laugh. “Aye, poor old man, sayest thou?...
+So, so, thou art of poor stuff, anyhow, and
+wouldst look well only when stretched upon a fine
+Cremona violin!...”</p>
+
+<p>Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over
+the poor maniac, and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress
+as tender and as gentle as that of a doting mother, he
+left the sick-room for a few instants, to seek relief in his
+own garret. When he returned, the ravings were following
+another channel. Franz was singing, trying to
+imitate the sounds of a violin.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the
+sick man became perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of
+fire clutching at his violin. Their skeleton hands, from
+each finger of which grew a flaming claw, beckoned to
+old Samuel.... They approached and surrounded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+the old master, and were preparing to rip him open ...
+him “the only man on this earth who loves me with an
+unselfish, holy love, and ... whose intestines can
+be of any good at all!” he went on whispering, with
+glaring eyes and demon laugh....</p>
+
+<p>By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared,
+and by the end of the ninth day Stenio had
+left his bed, having no recollection of his illness, and no
+suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his inner
+thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such
+a horrible idea as the sacrifice of his old master to his
+ambition had ever entered his mind? Hardly. The
+only immediate result of his fatal illness was, that as, by
+reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no
+issue, another passion awoke, which might avail to feed
+his ambition and his insatiable fancy. He plunged
+headlong into the study of the Occult Arts, of Alchemy
+and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young
+dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate
+longing for his, as he thought, for ever lost violin....</p>
+
+<p>Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation
+about Paganini was never resumed between the master
+and the pupil. But a profound melancholy had taken
+possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a word,
+the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its
+habitual place. It was as the presence of a soulless
+corpse between them.</p>
+
+<p>The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic,
+even avoiding the mention of music. Once, as his old
+professor, after long hesitation, took out his own violin
+from its dust-covered case and prepared to play, Franz
+gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the
+first notes of the bow, however, he glared like a madman,
+and rushing out of the house, remained for hours,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+wandering in the streets. Then old Samuel in his turn
+threw his instrument down, and locked himself up in his
+room till the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and
+gloomy, old Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat,
+and after hopping about the room in a magpie fashion,
+approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon the
+young man’s brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>“Is it not time to put an end to all this?”...</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz
+echoed, as in a dream:</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is time to put an end to this.”</p>
+
+<p>Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was
+astonished not to see his old teacher in his usual place
+to greet him. But he had greatly altered during the last
+few months, and he at first paid no attention to his
+absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into
+the adjoining room, a little parlor where they had their
+meals, and which separated their two bedrooms. The
+fire had not been lighted since the embers had died out
+on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere visible of
+the professor’s busy hand in his usual housekeeping
+duties. Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz
+took his usual place at the corner of the now cold fire-place,
+and fell into an aimless reverie. As he stretched
+himself in his old arm-chair, raising both his hands to
+clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his,
+his hand came into contact with something on a shelf
+at his back; he knocked against a case, and brought it
+violently on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>It was old Klaus’ violin-case that came down to the
+floor with such a sudden crash that the case opened and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+the violin fell out of it, rolling to the feet of Franz.
+And then the chords, striking against the brass fender
+emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the
+sigh of an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole
+room, and reverberated in the head and the very heart
+of the young man. The effect of that broken violin-string
+was magical.</p>
+
+<p>“Samuel!” cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from
+their sockets, and an unknown terror suddenly taking
+possession of his whole being. “Samuel! what has
+happened?... My good, my dear old master!” he
+called out, hastening to the professor’s little room, and
+throwing the door violently open. No one answered, all
+was silent within.</p>
+
+<p>He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own
+voice, so changed and hoarse it seemed to him at this
+moment. No reply came in response to his call. Naught
+followed but a dead silence ... that stillness which,
+in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the
+presence of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a
+tomb, such silence acquires a mysterious power, which
+strikes the sensitive soul with a nameless terror....
+The little room was dark, and Franz hastened to open
+the shutters.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless....
+At the sight of the corpse of him who had loved
+him so well, and had been to him more than a father,
+Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling, a
+terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist
+got the better of the despair of the man, and smothered
+the feelings of the latter in a few seconds.</p>
+
+<p>A note bearing his own name was conspicuously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+placed upon a table near the corpse. With trembling
+hand, the violinist tore open the envelope, and read the
+following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">My beloved son, Franz</span>,</p>
+
+<p>When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice
+that your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished
+for your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an
+inanimate lump of clay. Of your old teacher there now remains
+but a clod of cold organic matter. I need not prompt you as to
+what you have to do with it. Fear not stupid prejudices. It is
+for your future fame that I have made an offering of my body,
+and you would be guilty of the blackest ingratitude were you
+now to render useless this sacrifice. When you shall have replaced
+the chords upon your violin, and these chords a portion of
+my own self, under your touch it will acquire the power of that
+accursed sorcerer, all the magic voices of Paganini’s instrument.
+You will find therein my voice, my sighs and groans, my song of
+welcome, the prayerful sobs of my infinite and sorrowful sympathy,
+my love for you. And now, my Franz, fear nobody!
+Take your instrument with you, and dog the steps of him who
+filled our lives with bitterness and despair!... Appear in
+every arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a rival, and
+bravely throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face. O Franz!
+then only wilt thou hear with what a magic power the full notes
+of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin. Perchance,
+with a last caressing touch of its chords, thou wilt remember
+that they once formed a portion of thine old teacher, who now
+embraces and blesses thee for the last time.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Samuel</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but
+they dried up instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate
+hope and pride, the two orbs of the future
+magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the dead
+man, shone like the eyes of a demon.</p>
+
+<p>Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on
+that day, after the legal inquiry was over. As another
+note, written with the view of satisfying the authorities,
+had been prudently provided by the loving care of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+old teacher, the verdict was, “Suicide from causes unknown;”
+after this the coroner and the police retired,
+leaving the bereaved heir alone in the death-room, with
+the remains of that which had once been a living man.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the
+violin had been dusted, and four new, stout strings had
+been stretched upon it. Franz dared not look at them.
+He tried to play, but the bow trembled in his hand like
+a dagger in the grasp of a novice-brigand. He then
+determined not to try again, until the portentous night
+should arrive, when he should have a chance of rivaling,
+nay, of surpassing, Paganini.</p>
+
+<p>The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and
+was giving a series of triumphant concerts at an old
+Flemish town in Belgium.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">One</span> night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of
+admirers, was sitting in the dining-room of the hotel at
+which he was staying, a visiting card, with a few words
+written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a young
+man with wild and staring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons
+could bear, but receiving back a glance as calm and
+determined as his own, Paganini slightly bowed, and
+then dryly said:</p>
+
+<p>“Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am
+at your service.”</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning the whole town was startled
+by the appearance of bills posted at the corner of every
+street, and bearing the strange notice:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquo2">
+<p>On the night of ... at the Grand Theater of ... and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+for the first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a
+German violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet
+to the world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel—upon
+their violins. He purposes to compete with the great “virtuoso”
+in the execution of the most difficult of his compositions.
+The famous Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio
+will play, in competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated
+“Fantaisie Caprice” of the latter, known as “The
+Witches.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who,
+amid his greatest triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable
+speculation, doubled the usual price of admission,
+but still the theater could not hold the crowds that flocked
+to secure tickets for that memorable performance.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and
+the “duel” was in everyone’s mouth. Franz Stenio,
+who, instead of sleeping, had passed the whole long
+hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and
+down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward
+morning, fallen on his bed from mere physical exhaustion.
+Gradually he passed into a death-like and dreamless
+slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke, but
+finding it too early to rise he fell to sleep again. And
+then he had a vivid dream—so vivid indeed, so life-like,
+that from its terrible realism he felt sure that it was a
+vision rather than a dream.</p>
+
+<p>He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked
+in its case, the key of which never left him. Since he
+had strung it with those terrible chords he never let it
+out of his sight for a moment. In accordance with his
+resolution he had not touched it since his first trial, and
+his bow had never but once touched the human strings,
+for he had since always practised on another instrument.
+But now in his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+case. Something in it was attracting his attention, and
+he found himself incapable of detaching his eyes from it.
+Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case slowly
+rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived
+two small, phosphorescent green eyes—eyes but too
+familiar to him—fixing themselves on his, lovingly,
+almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill voice, as if
+issuing from these ghastly orbs—the voice and orbs of
+Samuel Klaus himself—resounded in Stenio’s horrified
+ear, and he heard it say:</p>
+
+<p>“Franz, my beloved boy.... Franz, I cannot,
+no, <em>I cannot</em> separate myself from ... <em>them</em>!”</p>
+
+<p>And “they” twanged piteously inside the case.</p>
+
+<p>Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his
+blood actually freezing, and his hair moving and standing
+erect on his head....</p>
+
+<p>“It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to
+formulate in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>“I have tried my best, Franzchen.... I have
+tried my best to sever myself from these accursed strings,
+without pulling them to pieces ...” pleaded the
+same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me to do
+so?...”</p>
+
+<p>Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded
+within the case, now dragged about the table in
+every direction, by some interior power, like some living
+wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper and more
+jerky with every new pull.</p>
+
+<p>It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those
+sounds. He had often remarked them before—indeed,
+ever since he had used his master’s viscera as a footstool
+for his own ambition. But on every occasion a
+feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+investigating their cause, and he had tried to assure
+himself that the sounds were only a hallucination.</p>
+
+<p>But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact,
+whether in dream or in reality he knew not, nor did he
+care, since the hallucination—if hallucination it were—was
+far more real and vivid than any reality. He tried
+to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens
+in nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a
+finger.... He felt hopelessly paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate
+with each moment, and at last something inside the
+case snapped violently. The vision of his Stradivarius,
+devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes,
+throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the
+incubus that held him spell-bound. But as the last
+supplicating whisper of the invisible Presence repeated:</p>
+
+<p>“Do, oh, do ... help me to cut myself off——”</p>
+
+<p>Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an
+enraged tiger defending its prey, and with one frantic
+effort breaking the spell.</p>
+
+<p>“Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!” he
+cried, in hoarse and trembling tones.</p>
+
+<p>He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while
+firmly pressing his left hand on it, he seized with the
+right a piece of rosin from the table and he drew on the
+leathered-covered top the sign of the six-pointed star—the
+seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the rebellious
+djins inside their prisons.</p>
+
+<p>A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her
+dead little ones, came out of the violin-case:</p>
+
+<p>“Thou art ungrateful ... very ungrateful, my
+Franz!” sobbed the blubbering “spirit-voice.” “But I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+forgive ... for I still love thee well. Yet thou
+canst not shut me in ... boy. Behold!”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/p132.jpg" width="403" height="610" alt="" />
+<div class="caption">
+<p class="noi">“HE VIOLENTLY SHUT DOWN THE SELF-RAISING LID
+AND DREW ON THE LEATHER-COVERED TOP THE SIGN
+OF THE SIX-POINTED STAR, THE SEAL OF KING SOLOMON.”</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered
+case and table, and rising upward formed itself first into
+an indistinct shape. Then it began growing, and as it
+grew, Franz felt himself gradually enfolded in cold and
+damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave a
+terrible cry and—awoke; but, strangely enough, not on
+his bed, but near the table, just as he had dreamed,
+pressing the violin-case desperately with both his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>“It was but a dream, ... after all,” he muttered,
+still terrified, but relieved of the load on his heaving
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and
+unlocked the case to inspect the violin. He found it
+covered with dust, but otherwise sound and in order, and
+he suddenly felt himself as cool and determined as ever.
+Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the
+bow, tightened the strings and tuned them. He even
+went so far as to try upon it the first notes of the
+“Witches”; first cautiously and timidly, then using his
+bow boldly and with full force.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of that loud, solitary note—defiant as the
+war trumpet of a conqueror, sweet and majestic as the
+touch of a seraph on his golden harp in the fancy of
+the faithful—thrilled through the very soul of Franz.
+It revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected potency in his
+bow, which ran on in strains that filled the room with
+the richest swell of melody, unheard by the artist until
+that night. Commencing in uninterrupted <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">legato</i> tones,
+his bow sang to him of sun-bright hope and beauty, of
+moonlit nights, when the soft and balmy stillness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and
+inanimate with a voice and a song of love. For a few
+brief moments it was a torrent of melody, the harmony
+of which, “tuned to soft woe,” was calculated to make
+mountains weep, had there been any in the room, and to
+soothe</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">... even th’ inexorable powers of hell,<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">the presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest
+hotel room. Suddenly, the solemn <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">legato</i> chant, contrary
+to all laws of harmony, quivered, became <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">arpeggios</i>, and
+ended in shrill <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">staccatos</i>, like the notes of a hyena laugh.
+The same creeping sensation of terror, as he had before
+felt, came over him, and Franz threw the bow away. He
+had recognized the familiar laugh, and would have no
+more of it. Dressing, he locked the bedeviled violin
+securely in its case, and, taking it with him to the
+dining-room, determined to await quietly the hour of
+trial.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> terrible hour of the struggle had come, and Stenio
+was at his post—calm, resolute, almost smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The theater was crowded to suffocation, and there was
+not even standing room to be got for any amount of hard
+cash or favoritism. The singular challenge had reached
+every quarter to which the post could carry it, and gold
+flowed freely into Paganini’s unfathomable pockets, to an
+extent almost satisfying even to his insatiate and venal
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>It was arranged that Paganini should begin. When
+he appeared upon the stage, the thick walls of the theater
+shook to their foundations with the applause that greeted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+him. He began and ended his famous composition “The
+Witches” amid a storm of cheers. The shouts of public
+enthusiasm lasted so long that Franz began to think his
+turn would never come. When, at last, Paganini, amid
+the roaring applause of a frantic public, was allowed to
+retire behind the scenes, his eye fell upon Stenio, who
+was tuning his violin, and he felt amazed at the serene
+calmness, the air of assurance, of the unknown German
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>When Franz approached the footlights, he was received
+with icy coldness. But for all that, he did not feel in
+the least disconcerted. He looked very pale, but his
+thin white lips wore a scornful smile as response to this
+dumb unwelcome. He was sure of his triumph.</p>
+
+<p>At the first notes of the prelude of “The Witches” a
+thrill of astonishment passed over the audience. It was
+Paganini’s touch, and—it was something more. Some—and
+they were the majority—thought that never, in his
+best moments of inspiration, had the Italian artist himself,
+in executing that diabolical composition of his, exhibited
+such an extraordinary diabolical power. Under
+the pressure of the long muscular fingers of Franz, the
+chords shivered like the palpitating intestines of a disemboweled
+victim under the vivisector’s knife. They
+moaned melodiously, like a dying child. The large blue
+eye of the artist, fixed with a satanic expression upon
+the sounding-board, seemed to summon forth Orpheus
+himself from the infernal regions, rather than the
+musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of
+the violin. Sounds seemed to transform themselves into
+objective shapes, thickly and precipitately gathering as
+at the evocation of a mighty magician, and to be whirling
+around him, like a host of fantastic, infernal figures,
+dancing the witches’ “goat dance.” In the empty depths<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+of the shadowy background of the stage, behind the artist,
+a nameless phantasmogoria, produced by the concussion
+of unearthly vibrations, seemed to form pictures of
+shameless orgies, of the voluptuous hymens of a real
+witches’ Sabbat.... A collective hallucination took
+hold of the public. Panting for breath, ghastly, and
+trickling with the icy perspiration of an inexpressible
+horror, they sat spell-bound, and unable to break the
+spell of the music by the slightest motion. They experienced
+all the illicit enervating delights of the
+paradise of Mahommed, that come into the disordered
+fancy of an opium-eating Mussulman, and felt at the
+same time the abject terror, the agony of one who
+struggles against an attack of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">delirium tremens</i>....
+Many ladies shrieked aloud, others fainted, and strong
+men gnashed their teeth in a state of utter helplessness.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>Then came the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">finale</i>. Thundering uninterrupted
+applause delayed its beginning, expanding the momentary
+pause to a duration of almost a quarter of an hour.
+The bravos were furious, almost hysterical. At last,
+when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile
+was as sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to
+attack the famous <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">finale</i>, his eye fell upon Paganini, who,
+calmly seated in the manager’s box, had been behind
+none in zealous applause. The small and piercing black
+eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the Stradivarius
+in the hands of Franz, but otherwise he seemed
+quite cool and unconcerned. His rival’s face troubled
+him for one short instant, but he regained his self-possession
+and, lifting once more his bow, drew the first
+note.</p>
+
+<p>Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and
+soon knew no bounds. The listeners heard and saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+indeed. The witches’ voices resounded in the air, and
+beyond all the other voices, one voice was heard—</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seem’d of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion’s roar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sounds of billows beating on the shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The groan of winds among the leafy wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And burst of thunder from the rending cloud;—<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas these, all these in one....<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering
+sounds—famous among prodigious musical feats—imitating
+the precipitate flight of the witches before bright
+dawn; of the unholy women saturated with the fumes of
+their nocturnal Saturnalia, when—a strange thing came
+to pass on the stage. Without the slightest transition,
+the notes suddenly changed. In their aerial flight of
+ascension and descent, their melody was unexpectedly
+altered in character. The sounds became confused,
+scattered, disconnected ... and then—it seemed from
+the sounding-board of the violin—came out squeaking,
+jarring tones, like those of a street Punch, screaming at
+the top of a senile voice:</p>
+
+<p>“Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy?... Have
+not I gloriously kept my promise, eh?”</p>
+
+<p>The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize
+the whole situation, those who heard the voice and the
+<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Punchinello</cite>-like tones, were freed, as by enchantment,
+from the terrible charm under which they had been held.
+Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of half-anger
+and half-irritation were now heard from every
+corner of the vast theater. The musicians in the orchestra,
+with faces still blanched from weird emotion,
+were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole
+audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+to solve the enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted,
+too disposed to laugh to remain one moment
+longer in the building.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls
+and the pit became once more motionless, and stood
+petrified as though struck by lightning. What all saw
+was terrible enough—the handsome though wild face of
+the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect
+figure bent down, as though under the weight of years;
+but this was nothing to that which some of the most
+sensitive clearly perceived. Franz Stenio’s person was
+now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist,
+cloud-like, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually
+tightening round the living form, as though ready
+to engulf him. And there were those also who discerned
+in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a clearly-defined
+figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of a
+grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old
+man, whose viscera were protruding and the ends of the
+intestines stretched on the violin.</p>
+
+<p>Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was
+then seen, driving his bow furiously across the human
+chords, with the contortions of a demoniac, as we see
+them represented on medieval cathedral paintings!</p>
+
+<p>An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and
+breaking now, for the last time, through the spell which
+had again bound them motionless, every living creature
+in the theater made one mad rush towards the door. It
+was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human torrent,
+roaring amid a shower of discordant notes, idiotic
+squeakings, prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous
+cries of frenzy, above which, like the detonations of
+pistol shots, was heard the consecutive bursting of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that
+bewitched violin.</p>
+
+<p class="center">.<span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span><span class="dot">.</span></p>
+
+<p>When the theater was emptied of the last man of the
+audience, the terrified manager rushed on the stage in
+search of the unfortunate performer. He was found
+dead and already stiff, behind the footlights, twisted up
+into the most unnatural of postures, with the “catguts”
+wound curiously around his neck, and his violin shattered
+into a thousand fragments....</p>
+
+<p>When it became publicly known that the unfortunate
+would-be rival of Niccolo Paganini had not left a cent to
+pay for his funeral or his hotel-bill, the Genoese, his
+proverbial meanness notwithstanding, settled the hotel-bill
+and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.</p>
+
+<p>He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of
+the Stradivarius—as a momento of the strange event.</p>
+
+
+<p class="end">THE END</p>
+
+
+<hr class="l2" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a><br />
+<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>There is no Religion Higher than Truth</i></p>
+
+<hr class="l5" />
+
+<p class="ubt">THE<br />
+
+<span class="f12">UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD</span><br />
+
+AND<br />
+
+<span class="f12">THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY</span></p>
+
+<hr class="l5" />
+
+<p class="c10"><i>Established for the benefit of the people of the earth &amp; all creatures</i></p>
+
+<hr class="l6" />
+
+<p class="c10">OBJECTS</p>
+
+<p>This BROTHERHOOD is part of a great and universal
+movement which has been active in all ages.</p>
+
+<p>This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact. Its
+principal purpose is to teach Brotherhood, demonstrate that it is
+a fact in nature and make it a living power in the life of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Its subsidiary purpose is to study ancient and modern religions,
+science, philosophy and art; to investigate the laws of
+nature and the divine powers in man.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*<span class="ast">*</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</span>,
+founded by H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky in New York, 1875, continued
+after her death under the leadership of the co-founder, William
+Q. Judge, and now under the leadership of their successor,
+Katherine Tingley, has its Headquarters at the International
+Theosophical Center, Point Loma, California.</p>
+
+<p>This Organization is not in any way connected with nor does
+it endorse any other societies using the name of Theosophy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">*<span class="ast">*</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</span>
+welcomes to membership all who truly love their fellow men
+and desire the eradication of the evils caused by the barriers of
+race, creed, caste or color, which have so long impeded human
+progress; to all sincere lovers of truth and to all who aspire to
+higher and better things than the mere pleasures and interests of
+a worldly life, and are prepared to do all in their power to make
+Brotherhood a living power in the life of humanity, its various
+departments offer unlimited opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>The whole work of the Organization is under the direction
+of the Leader and Official Head, Katherine Tingley, as outlined
+in the Constitution.</p>
+
+<hr class="l7" />
+
+<p class="c12">Do Not Fail to Profit by the Following</p>
+
+
+<p>It is a regrettable fact that many people use the name of Theosophy
+and of our Organization for self-interest, as also that of
+H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky, the Foundress, to attract attention to themselves
+and to gain public support. This they do in private
+and public speech and in publications, also by lecturing throughout
+the country. Without being in any way connected with
+<span class="smcap">The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</span>, in
+many cases they permit it to be inferred that they are, thus
+misleading the public, and many honest inquirers are hence
+led away from the truths of Theosophy as presented by
+H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky and her successors, William Q. Judge and
+Katherine Tingley, and practically exemplified in their Theosophical
+work for the uplifting of humanity.</p>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="ads">
+<p class="c12">The International Brotherhood League</p>
+
+<p class="c10">(Founded in 1897 by Katherine Tingley)</p>
+
+
+<p class="ioa">ITS OBJECTS ARE:</p>
+
+<div class="ibl">
+<p>1. To help men and women to realize the nobility of their
+calling and their true position in life.</p>
+
+<p>2. To educate children of all nations on the broadest lines
+of Universal Brotherhood; and to prepare destitute and homeless
+children to become workers for humanity.</p>
+
+<p>3. To ameliorate the condition of unfortunate women, and
+assist them to a higher life.</p>
+
+<p>4. To assist those who are, or have been in prisons, to establish
+themselves in honorable positions in life.</p>
+
+<p>5. To abolish capital punishment.</p>
+
+<p>6. To bring about a better understanding between so-called
+savage and civilized races, by promoting a closer and more sympathetic
+relationship between them.</p>
+
+<p>7. To relieve human suffering resulting from flood, famine,
+war, and other calamities; and, generally, to extend aid, help
+and comfort to suffering humanity throughout the world.</p>
+
+
+<p>For further information regarding the above Notices, address</p>
+
+<p class="center">KATHERINE TINGLEY</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">International Theosophical Headquarters,</span></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Point Loma, California</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="c11"><b>Books Recommended to Inquirers</b></p>
+
+<p class="c10">For <i>complete</i> <span class="smcap">Book List</span> write to<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Theosophical Publishing Co.</span>, Point Loma, California</p>
+
+
+<div class="marg">
+<div class="blockquo1">
+<p>
+<b>Bhagavad Gita</b>; (W.&nbsp;Q. Judge, Am. Edition) pocket size,<br />
+Morocco, gilt edges      <span class="rght">$1.00</span><br />
+Red leather                <span class="rght">.75</span><br />
+<i>The pearl of the scriptures of the East.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<b>Echoes from the Orient</b>; (W.&nbsp;Q. Judge) cloth      <span class="rght">.50</span><br />
+Paper                                              <span class="rght">.25</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="hang">
+<i>21 valued articles, giving a broad outline of the Theosophical
+doctrines, written for the newspaper-reading
+public.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Epitome of Theosophical Teachings, An</b><br />
+(W.&nbsp;Q. Judge), 40 pages      <span class="rght">.15</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Yoga Aphorisms</b> (translated by W.&nbsp;Q. Judge), pocket
+size, leather      <span class="rght">.75</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Isis Unveiled</b>, by H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky. 2 vols, royal 8vo,
+about 1400 pages; cloth; with portrait of the author.
+<i>New Point Loma Edition with a preface.</i> Postpaid      <span class="rght">$7.00</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Key to Theosophy, The</b>; (H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky). <i>New Point
+Loma Edition, with Glossary and exhaustive Index.
+Portraits of H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky and W.&nbsp;Q. Judge.</i> 8vo,
+cloth, 400 pages. Postpaid      <span class="rght">$2.25</span></p>
+
+<p class="nrm"><i>A clear exposition of Theosophy in form of question and
+answer. The book for students.</i></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Nightmare Tales</b> (H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky). <i>Illustrated by
+R. Machell, R.&nbsp;A.</i> A collection of the weirdest tales
+ever written down by any mortal. They contain paragraphs
+of the profoundest mystical philosophy.<br />
+
+Cloth      <span class="rght">.60</span><br />
+Paper      <span class="rght">.35</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Life at Point Loma, The</b>: Some notes by Katherine
+Tingley, Leader and Official Head of the <span class="smcap">Universal
+Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</span>      <span class="rght">.15</span><br />
+
+<span class="nrm">Reprinted from the <i>Los Angeles Post</i>, Dec., 1902.</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Concentration, Culture of</b> (W.&nbsp;Q. Judge)      <span class="rght">.15</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Hypnotism: Theosophical views on</b> (40 pages)      <span class="rght">.15</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Light on the Path</b>; (M.&nbsp;C.) with comments,<br />
+
+Bound in black leather      <span class="rght">.75</span><br />
+Embossed paper              <span class="rght">.25</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Mysteries of the Heart Doctrine, The.</b> Prepared by
+<span class="smcap">Katherine Tingley</span> and her pupils. Square, 8vo.<br />
+
+Cloth      <span class="rght">$2.00</span><br />
+Paper      <span class="rght">$1.25</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="nrm"><span class="smcap">A Series of 8 Pamphlets</span> comprising the Different
+Articles in above; paper; each      <span class="rght">.25</span></p>
+
+
+<p><b>Secret Doctrine, The.</b> The Synthesis of Science, Religion,
+and Philosophy, by H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky. <i>New
+Point Loma Edition.</i> Two Vols. Royal 8vo., about
+1500 pages; cloth. Postage prepaid      <span class="rght">$10.00</span></p>
+
+<p class="nrm">To be reprinted from the original edition of 1888, as published
+by <span class="smcap">H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky</span>.</p>
+
+
+<p><b>Katherine Tingley, Humanity’s friend:</b></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><b>A Visit to Katherine Tingley</b> (by John Hubert
+Greusel);</p>
+
+<p class="hang"><b>A Study of Râja Yoga at Point Loma</b> (Reprint from
+the San Francisco <i>Chronicle</i>, January 6th, 1907).
+The above three comprised in a pamphlet of 50
+pages, published by the Woman’s Theosophical
+Propaganda League, Point Loma      <span class="rght">.15</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ta1">Occultism, Studies in</p>
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p>(<span class="smcap">H.&nbsp;P. Blavatsky</span>). Pocket size, 6 vols., cloth, per
+set     <span class="rght">$1.50</span></p>
+
+<ul class="lsoff">
+<li><b>Vol. 1.</b> Practical Occultism. Occultism <i>vs.</i> the Occult Arts. The Blessing of Publicity      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+<li><b>Vol. 2.</b> Hypnotism. Black Magic in Science, Signs of the Times      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+<li><b>Vol. 3.</b> Psychic and Noetic Action      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+<li><b>Vol. 4.</b> Kosmic Mind. Dual Aspect of Wisdom      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+<li><b>Vol. 5.</b> Esoteric Character of the Gospels      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+<li><b>Vol. 6.</b> Astral Bodies; Constitution of the Inner Man      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="ta1">The Path Series</p>
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p class="nrm1"><span class="smcap">Specially Adapted for Inquirers</span><br />
+
+<i>Already published:</i></p>
+
+<ul class="lsoff">
+  <li class="in2"><b>No. 1. The purpose of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</b>      <span class="rght">.05</span></li>
+
+  <li class="in2"><b>No. 2. Theosophy Generally Stated</b> (W.&nbsp;Q. Judge)      <span class="rght">.05</span></li>
+
+  <li class="in2"><b>No. 3. Mislaid Mysteries</b> (Herbert Coryn, M.&nbsp;D.)      <span class="rght">.05</span><br />
+  Thirty copies $1.00; one hundred copies $3.00</li>
+
+  <li class="in2"><b>No. 4. Theosophy and Its Counterfeits</b>      <span class="rght">.05</span><br />
+  Thirty copies $1.00; one hundred copies $3.00</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ta1">Theosophical Manuals</p>
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p class="nrm1"><span class="smcap">Elementary Handbooks for Students</span></p>
+
+<ul class="lsoff">
+  <li class="in3">Cloth, Price each      <span class="rght">.35</span></li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 1. Elementary Theosophy.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 2. The Seven Principles of Man.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 3. Karma.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 4. Reincarnation.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 5. Man after Death.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 6. Kâmaloka and Devachan.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 7. Teachers and Their Disciples.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 8. The Doctrine of Cycles.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. &nbsp; 9. Psychism, Ghostology, and the Astral Plane.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 10. The Astral Light.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 11. Psychometry, Clairvoyance, and Thought-Transference.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 12. The Angel and the Demon (2 vols., 35c. each)</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 13. The Flame and the Clay.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 14. On God and Prayer.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 15. Theosophy: The Mother of Religions.</li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 16. From Crypt to Pronaos.<br />
+  <span class="f9">An Essay on the Rise and Fall of Dogma.</span></li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 17. Earth.<br />
+  <span class="f9">Its Parentage; its Rounds and its Races.</span></li>
+
+  <li class="in3">No. 18. Sons of the Firemist.<br />
+  <span class="f9">A Study of Man.</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p class="manu">These Manuals contain some of the latest thought on the
+above technical subjects. Each volume is arranged to be complete
+in itself, though forming a necessary member of the series.
+It is intended to add others from time to time, to cover most of
+the technical aspects of Theosophy in a direct and simple way,
+thus forming a Theosophical library of inestimable value to
+inquirers. No one interested in Theosophy can afford to do
+without them.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ta1">Lotus Group Literature</p>
+
+<p class="c11">LOTUS LIBRARY FOR CHILDREN</p>
+
+<p><i>Introduced under the direction of Katherine Tingley</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="marg">
+<ul class="lsoff">
+  <li><b>1. The Little Builders, and their Voyage to Rangi</b> (R.&nbsp;N.)      <span class="rght">.50</span></li>
+
+  <li><b>2. The Coming of the King</b> (Machell); cloth, gilt edges      <span class="rght">.35</span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></li>
+
+  <li><b>Lotus Song Book.</b> Fifty original songs with copyrighted music; boards      <span class="rght">.50</span></li>
+
+  <li><b>Lotus Song</b>—“<i>The Sun Temple</i>” with music      <span class="rght">.15</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="ta1">New Century Series</p>
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p class="r1"><i>The Pith and Marrow of Some Sacred Writings.</i></p>
+
+<p class="r1">Ten Pamphlets, issued serially; Scripts, each      <span class="rght">.25</span></p>
+
+<p class="r1">Subscription, for the set      <span class="rght">$1.50</span></p>
+
+<p class="r2"><i>Already published:</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquo1">
+<p><b>Script 1.</b> <i>Contents</i>: The Relation of Universal Brotherhood
+to Christianity—No Man Can Serve Two
+Masters—In this Place is a Greater Thing</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 2.</b> <i>Contents</i>: A Vision of Judgment—The
+“Woes” of the Prophets—The Great Victory—Fragment;
+from Bhagavad Gita—Co-Heirs with
+Christ—Jesus the Man (the only known personal
+description)</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 3.</b> <i>Contents</i>: The Lesson of Israel’s History—The
+Man Born Blind—Man’s Divinity and Perfectibility—The
+Everlasting Covenant—The Burden of
+the Lord</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 4.</b> <i>Contents</i>: Reincarnation in the Bible—The
+Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven—The Temple
+of God—The Heart Doctrine—The Money Changers
+in the Temple</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 5.</b> <i>Contents</i>: Egypt and Prehistoric America—Theoretical
+and Practical Theosophy—Death, One
+of the Crowning Victories of Human Life—Reliance
+on the Law—Led by the Spirit of God</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 6.</b> <i>Contents</i>: Education Through Illusion to
+Truth—Astronomy in the Light of Ancient Wisdom—Occultism
+and Magic—Resurrection</p>
+
+<p><b>Script 7.</b> <i>Contents</i>: Theosophy and Islam, a word
+concerning Sufism—Archaeology in the light of
+Theosophy—Man, a Spiritual Builder</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="l1" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="ta2">T<span class="u">heosophical</span> P<span class="u">eriodicals</span></p>
+
+<p class="f12 noi">CENTURY PATH</p>
+
+<p class="c8">ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY</p>
+
+<p class="c10">Edited by KATHERINE TINGLEY</p>
+
+<p class="adtxt1">A Magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity,
+the Promulgation of Theosophy and the Study of Ancient
+and Modern Ethics, Philosophy, Science and Art.</p>
+
+<p class="prc1"><span class="lft">Year $4.00</span>      <span class="rgt">Single Copy 10 Cents</span></p>
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p class="noi">Write for a sample copy to</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="f11">NEW CENTURY CORPORATION,</span><br />
+<span class="rght f8">Point Loma, California, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><b>Râja Yoga Messenger.</b> <i>Illustrated.</i> Monthly. Yearly
+subscription      <span class="rght">.50</span></p>
+
+<p class="adtxt2">Unsectarian publication for Young Folk, conducted
+by a staff of pupils of the Râja School at Lomaland</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Address <span class="smcap">Master Albert G. Spalding</span>, Business Manager
+<b>Râja Yoga Messenger</b>, Point Loma, California</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="marg">
+<p class="hang1"><b>International Theosophical Chronicle.</b> <i>Illustrated.</i>
+Monthly. Yearly subscription, postpaid      <span class="rght">$1.00</span></p>
+
+<p class="adtxt2">The Theosophical Book Co., 18 Bartlett’s Buildings,
+Holborn Circus, London, E.&nbsp;C.</p>
+
+
+<p class="hang1"><b>Theosophia.</b> <i>Illustrated.</i> Monthly. Yearly subscription
+postpaid      <span class="rght">1.50</span></p>
+
+<p class="adtxt2">Universella Broderskapets Förlag, Barnhusgatan 10,
+Stockholm 1, Sweden.</p>
+
+
+<p class="hang1"><b>Universale Bruderschaft.</b> <i>Illustrated.</i> Monthly. Yearly
+subscription, postpaid      <span class="rght">1.50</span></p>
+
+<p class="adtxt2">J. Th. Heller, ob. Turnstrasse 3, Nürnberg, Germany</p>
+
+
+<p class="hang1"><b>Lotus-Knoppen.</b> <i>Illustrated.</i> Monthly. Yearly subscription,
+postpaid      <span class="rght">.75</span></p>
+
+<p class="adtxt2">A. Goud, Peperstraat, ingang Papengang, No. 14,
+Groningen, Holland</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Subscriptions to the above four Magazines may be secured
+also through <i>The Theosophical Publishing Company</i>, Point
+Loma, California</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="hang2"><i>Neither the editors of the above publications, nor the officers of the</i> <span class="smcap">Universal
+Brotherhood and Theosophical Society</span>, <i>or of any of its departments,
+receive salaries or other remuneration</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><i>All profits arising from the business of the Theosophical Publishing Co. are devoted
+to Humanitarian Work. All who assist in this work are directly
+helping the great cause of Humanity.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<p class="tn">Transcriber’s note</p>
+
+<p>Illustrations have been moved in between paragraphs, and
+empty pages removed.</p>
+
+<p>Also the following corrections have been made, on page<br />
+
+7 “situa-ation” changed to “situation” (a clearer comprehension of the
+situation)<br />
+
+13 ” added (perish in the Ocean of Mâyâ.”)<br />
+
+14 “sanctury” changed to “sanctuary” (had only peeped into the
+sanctuary)<br />
+
+16 “sancity” changed to “sanctity” (purity and sanctity of their lives)<br />
+
+67 “proceded” changed to “proceeded” (I proceeded without delay)<br />
+
+68 “wierdness” changed to “weirdness” (are heard in all their weirdness)<br />
+
+72 “unaccoutably” changed to “unaccountably” (had so unaccountably
+disappeared ten years before)<br />
+
+97 “unforseen” changed to “unforeseen” (the premature and unforeseen
+formation)<br />
+
+112 “unparalled” changed to “unparalleled” (The unparalleled artist
+arrived)<br />
+
+133 “the the” changed to “the” (he carefully rosined the bow)<br />
+
+142 “in in” changed to “in” (in many cases they permit).</p>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
+
+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: Nightmare Tales
+
+Author: H. P. Blavatsky
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTMARE TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by eagkw, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Note: Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_, bold
+with =signs=, and transcribed Greek with +signs+. Small capitals have
+been changed to all capitals. A more extensive transcriber's note can be
+found at the end of this book.
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
+                   Point Loma, California]
+
+
+
+
+  NIGHTMARE TALES
+
+
+  _By_
+
+
+  H. P. BLAVATSKY
+
+
+  The Aryan Theosophical Press
+  Point Loma, California,
+  U. S. A.
+  1907
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                               PAGE
+  A BEWITCHED LIFE                1
+
+  THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES         65
+
+  THE LUMINOUS SHIELD            81
+
+  FROM THE POLAR LANDS           95
+
+  THE ENSOULED VIOLIN           103
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A BEWITCHED LIFE
+
+(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had
+descended over the streets of A----, a small town on the Rhine, and was
+hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The
+greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day's work,
+had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay their
+aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all
+was quiet in the deserted streets.
+
+I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and
+sickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still was
+everything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness
+seemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,
+as it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonous
+singing so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had
+listened to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into
+the sound of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when,
+suddenly changing its character, the ever growing "singing" merged
+into other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first
+scarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
+strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voice
+speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrously
+acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so pure
+that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.
+Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, to
+me, owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voice
+familiar for long years and ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mental
+or physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
+consolation.
+
+"Courage," it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. "Think of the days
+passed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of
+Nature's truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;
+and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
+narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shorten
+the hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder before you!"
+
+"Yonder" meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the other
+side of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own in
+almost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windows
+of my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gaze
+towards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget the
+agony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.
+
+Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,
+whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly
+uncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous
+light, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected
+a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky--first from outside,
+then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongating
+itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the street
+from the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed.
+As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite house
+itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms had
+changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew to
+be a Swiss chalet--into a study, whose old, dark walls were covered
+from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquated
+folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the center stood
+a large old-fashioned table, littered over with manuscripts and
+writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat an old man; a
+grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so thin, so pale,
+yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student's
+lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheek-bones, as
+though they were carved out of ivory.
+
+As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon my
+pillows, the whole vision, chalet and study, desk, books and scribe,
+seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they approached nearer
+and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge of
+clouds across the street, they floated through the closed windows into
+my room and finally seemed to settle beside my bed.
+
+[Illustration: "I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A BRIGHT
+COLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALL
+VOICE OF THE QUILL."]
+
+"Listen to what he thinks and is going to write"--said in soothing tones
+the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. "Thus you will hear a
+narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long sleepless
+hours, and even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!"--it
+added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic formula.
+
+I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention on the
+solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did not
+see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old man
+was writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered
+murmur of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught the
+indistinct words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figure
+before me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloud
+instead of writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my
+gaze at the old scribe's face, I saw at a glance that his lips were
+compressed and motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his
+voice. Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand,
+I noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored spark
+that became instantaneously a sound, or--what is the same thing--it
+seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small voice
+of the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the time,
+perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will happen
+occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade, as Byron
+tells us, we
+
+    ... learn the language of another world ...
+
+However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my memory
+for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining them, for
+when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual, indelibly
+impressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.
+
+Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed to
+learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless, though
+the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for the
+occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, prove
+none the less interesting.
+
+
+I
+
+THE STRANGER'S STORY
+
+My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss cottages,
+hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down glaciers and a
+peak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, I
+returned--crippled mentally and physically--to die, if death would only
+have me. The pure invigorating air of my birth-place decided otherwise.
+I am still alive; perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts
+I have kept profoundly secret from all--a tale of horror I would rather
+hide than reveal. The reason for this unwillingness on my part is due
+to my early education, and to subsequent events that gave the lie to
+my most cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined to regard
+these events as providential: I, however, believe in no Providence, and
+yet am unable to attribute them to mere chance. I connect them as the
+ceaseless evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct causes,
+with one primary and fundamental cause, from which ensued all that
+followed. A feeble old man am I now, yet physical weakness has in no
+way impaired my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details of
+that terrible cause, which engendered such fatal results. It is these
+which furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence of
+one whom I fain would regard--oh, that I could do so!--as a creature
+born of my fancy, the evanescent production of a feverish, horrid
+dream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly and
+respected Being! It was that paragon of all the virtues who embittered
+my whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently out of the
+monotonous but secure groove of daily life, was the first to force upon
+me the certitude of a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horror
+to one already great enough.
+
+With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must
+interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how, if
+I could, would I obliterate that hated _Self_!
+
+Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the whole
+world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau
+and D'Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a
+thorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even
+pictured to myself any beings--least of all a Being--above or even
+outside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded
+everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of
+the physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing
+man has one, must be material. According to Origen's definition,
+_incorporeus_[1]--the epithet he gave to his God--signifies a substance
+only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best,
+we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses
+cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make
+itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
+
+      [1] +asomatos+.
+
+Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with a
+feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certain
+priests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latter
+feeling has never entirely abandoned me.
+
+Pascal, in the eighth Act of his "Thoughts," confesses to a most
+complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I
+too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such
+extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
+words in which he tells us: "I have examined if this God of whom all
+the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look
+everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers
+me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude." Nor
+have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely
+similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall
+I ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
+proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some
+persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. My
+whole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in such
+phenomena, and--I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoever
+means generated.
+
+On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost the
+greater part of my fortune, and resolved--for the sake of those I loved
+best, rather than for my own--to make another for myself. My elder
+sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer of
+a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.
+
+For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the
+confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I
+was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,
+in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
+Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy
+of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being
+called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the
+most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of
+the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in
+turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,
+Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.
+
+Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was not
+cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions
+on this subject altered. I derided the pretentions of the Japanese
+bonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
+Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers unknown
+to, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at all such
+ideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shun
+the pleasures of life, to put to rout one's passions, to render oneself
+insensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order to acquire such
+chimerical powers--seemed supremely ridiculous in my eyes.
+
+On a day for ever memorable to me--a fatal day--I made the acquaintance
+of a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest, named Tamoora
+Hideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from that
+moment he became my best and most trusted friend. Notwithstanding my
+great and genuine regard for him, however, whenever a good opportunity
+was offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions, thereby
+very often hurting his feelings.
+
+But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist's
+heart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even when
+they were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generally
+limited his replies to the "wait and see" kind of protest. Nor could he
+be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of the
+existence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms "atheism"
+and "scepticism" was beyond the comprehension of his otherwise
+extremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverential
+Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of sense
+should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modern
+science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full of Gods and
+spirits, dzins and demons. "Man is a spiritual being," he insisted,
+"who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or punished in
+the between times." The proposition that man is nothing else but a heap
+of organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused to
+admit that he was no better than "a stalking machine, a speaking head
+without a soul in it," whose "thoughts are all bound by the laws of
+motion." "For," he argued, "if my actions were, as you say, prescribed
+beforehand, and I had no more liberty or free will to change the course
+of my action than the running waters of the river yonder, then the
+glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and demerit, would be foolishness
+indeed."
+
+Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend's ontology rested on
+the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied "just" Law of
+Retribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
+
+"We cannot," said he paradoxically one day, "hope to live hereafter in
+the full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for it
+beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laugh
+not, friend of no faith," he meekly pleaded, "but rather think and
+reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in Spirit
+during his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly hope to
+enjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his body, he
+is limited to that Spirit alone."
+
+"What can you mean by life in Spirit?"--I inquired.
+
+"Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call _Tushita
+Devaloka_ (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for
+himself between two births, by the gradual transference on to that
+plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
+through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain."...
+
+"How absurd! And how can man do this?"
+
+"Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods, will
+enable him to do so."
+
+"And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, I
+suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes of
+him after the death of his body?" was my mocking question.
+
+"He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his
+consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best--immediate
+rebirth; at worst--the state of _avitchi_, a mental hell. Yet one need
+not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to
+the hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach Spirit."
+
+"How so? Even when disbelieving in it?"--I rejoined.
+
+"Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one's nature room for
+doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it
+but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this will
+prove sufficient for the purpose."
+
+"You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.
+Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?"
+
+"There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that some
+unknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existence
+of which you think you have reasons to deny, is the 'spiritual plane'
+of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads you
+towards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and look
+within. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you have
+established an everlasting connexion between your consciousness and the
+temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate the
+fact of your having entered it. And according to the character and the
+variety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live in it
+after your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh."
+
+"What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness--if such a
+thing exists--to do with the temple?"
+
+"It has everything to do with it," solemnly rejoined the old man.
+"There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the temple
+of spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alone
+survive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish
+in the Ocean of Maya."
+
+Amused at the idea of living outside one's body, I urged on my old
+friend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning, the venerable man
+willingly consented.
+
+Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzi-Onene, a Buddhist
+monastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibet
+and China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the
+sect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among the
+many erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected and
+allied with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the
+doctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
+my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby to
+cure me of my infidelity.
+
+No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly
+involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his
+ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world--as
+for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the
+"spiritual plane" he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself
+worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given
+several hours daily to "contemplation." Thus _he knew_ (?!) that after
+he had laid aside his mortal casket, "a mere illusion," he explained--he
+would in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling
+of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or _ought to have
+had_--only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane had
+been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages of
+the laborer would prove proportionate.
+
+"But suppose the laborer, as in the example you have just brought
+forward in my case, should have no more than opened the temple door out
+of mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his
+foot therein again. What then?"
+
+"Then," he answered, "you would have only this short minute to record
+in your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafter
+records and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in our
+spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of reverence
+at the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been harboring
+in your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual life
+would be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record, save
+the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper."
+
+"How then could it be repeated?"--I insisted, highly amused. "What do
+you suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?"
+
+"In that case," he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word--"in
+that case, _you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the temple
+door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would
+seem to you an eternity_."
+
+This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, so
+grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almost
+inextinguishable fit of laughter.
+
+My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result
+of his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected such
+hilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me
+with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.
+
+"Pray excuse my laughter," I apologized. "But really, now, you cannot
+seriously mean to tell me that the 'spiritual state' you advocate and
+so firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do in
+life?"
+
+"Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling
+the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition
+of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual
+plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and
+no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of
+_Soul-Vision_, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be
+blamed.... What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual
+state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition
+of every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had been
+barren, there could be no results expected--save the repetition of that
+act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds
+and finally made to see certain truths." And passing through the usual
+Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.
+
+Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learned since, how
+little would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!
+
+But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I felt
+for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas about
+an after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men of
+supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence
+for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land.
+Their claims to the "miraculous" were simply odious to my notions. To
+hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest
+of all the business men I had come across in the East--mentioning these
+followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands,
+and affirmations of their possessing "great" and "wonderful" gifts,
+was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And
+who were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculous
+pretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these "holy beggars" who, as I
+then thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains
+and on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the better to afford no
+chance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them in
+their own dens? Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies
+who sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those who
+sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life,
+admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do accept
+pupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and
+that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity
+of their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest
+negation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils,
+classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and
+I went so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoism
+or _Sin-Syu_, "faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods," that
+is, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, is
+a kind of worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more
+miserably absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knaves
+of other sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritual
+teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of
+Society, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and
+the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men
+in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart, nor
+do they pass any ordination--at any rate none known to outsiders. And as
+they claim publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress
+being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply in
+the world's opinion professors and students of occult and spiritual
+sciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the least
+suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
+
+Years passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable scepticism grew
+stronger and waxed fiercer every day. I have already mentioned an elder
+and much-beloved sister, my only surviving relative. She had married
+and had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded her with feelings
+more filial than fraternal, and her children were as dear to me as
+might have been my own. At the time of the great catastrophe that in
+the course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune, and
+my mother break her heart, she it was, that sweet big sister of mine,
+who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined
+family. Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for whom she
+attempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded,
+she had renounced her own happiness. She sacrificed herself and the man
+she loved, by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to help
+our father and chiefly myself by her undivided devotion. And, oh, how I
+loved and reverenced her, time but strengthening this earliest family
+affection! They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a true
+friend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject, utter--whether
+consciously or unconsciously--the greatest calumny and lie. To say that
+a materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot love
+as a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.
+
+There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but these are found
+only occasionally in men who are even more selfish than they are
+sceptical, or vulgarly worldly. But when a man who is kindly disposed
+in his nature, for no selfish motives but because of reason and love
+of truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only strengthened
+in his family affections, and in his sympathies with his fellow men.
+All his emotions, all the ardent aspirations towards the unseen and
+unreachable, all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly
+bestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God, become now centered
+with tenfold force upon his loved ones and mankind. Indeed, the
+atheist's heart alone--
+
+                          ... can know,
+    What secret tides of still enjoyment flow
+    When brothers love....
+
+It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice my
+comfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness, the felicity
+of her who had been more than a mother to me. I was a mere youth
+when I left home for Hamburg. There, working with all the desperate
+earnestness of a man who has but one noble object in view--to relieve
+suffering, and help those whom he loves--I very soon secured the
+confidence of my employers, who raised me in consequence to the high
+post of trust I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward in
+life was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for my
+sake, and to help them in their struggle for existence. So purifying
+and unselfish was this affection of mine for her that when it came
+to be shared among her children, instead of losing in intensity by
+such division, it seemed only to grow the stronger. Born with the
+potentiality of the warmest family affection in me, the devotion for my
+sister was so great, that the thought of burning that sacred fire of
+love before any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered my
+head. This was the only church I recognized, the only church wherein I
+worshipped at the altar of holy family affection. In fact this large
+family of eleven persons, including her husband, was the only tie
+that attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine years, had
+I crossed the ocean with the sole object of seeing and pressing these
+dear ones to my heart. I had no other business in the West; and having
+performed this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to work and
+toil for them. For their sake I remained a bachelor, that the wealth I
+might acquire should go undivided to them alone.
+
+We had always corresponded as regularly as the long transit of the then
+very irregular service of the mail-boats would permit. But suddenly
+there came a break in my letters from home. For nearly a year I
+received no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless, more
+apprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I looked for a letter, a
+simple message; and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence were
+fruitless.
+
+"Friend," said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my only confidant,
+"Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and you will feel at rest."
+
+Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I could
+command under the provocation. But, as steamer after steamer came in
+without a word of news, I felt a despair which daily increased in depth
+and fixity. This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, a
+morbid desire to learn--the worst as I then thought. I struggled hard
+with the feeling, but it had the best of me. Only a few months before
+a complete master of myself--I now became an abject slave to fear. A
+fatalist of the school of D'Holbach, I, who had always regarded belief
+in the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophical
+happiness, and as having the most advantageous influence over human
+weaknesses, _I_ felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!
+I had gone so far as to forget the first principle of my doctrine--the
+only one calculated to calm our sorrows, to inspire us with a useful
+submission, namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blind
+destiny, with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be
+overwhelmed--the doctrine that _all is necessary_. Yes; forgetting
+this, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious longing, a stupid,
+disgraceful desire to learn--if not futurity, at any rate that which was
+taking place at the other side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterly
+modified, my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and like a
+weak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my mind to the very verge
+of lunacy in an attempt to look--as I had been told one could sometimes
+do--beyond the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,
+inexplicable silence!
+
+One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable Bonze, Tamoora,
+appeared on the verandah of my low wooden house. I had not visited
+him for many days, and he had come to know how I was. I took the
+opportunity to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I regarded
+with most affectionate respect. With equivocal taste--for which I
+repented almost before the words had been pronounced--I inquired of
+him why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when he
+might have learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogating
+a Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first; but after keenly
+scrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly remarked that he could only
+insist upon what he had advised before. Only one of that holy order
+could give me consolation in my present state.
+
+From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to challenge him to
+prove his assertions. I defied--I said to him--any and every one of his
+alleged magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinking
+of, and what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered that my
+desire could be easily satisfied. There was a Yamabooshi two doors from
+me, visiting a sick Sinto. He would fetch him--if I only said the word.
+
+I said it and _from the moment of its utterance my doom was sealed_.
+
+How shall I find words to describe the scene that followed! Twenty
+minutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed, an old
+Japanese, uncommonly tall and majestic for one of that race, pale,
+thin and emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I had
+expected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned an air of
+calm and dignified composure, the attitude of one who knows his moral
+superiority, and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those who
+fail to recognize it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,
+which I put to him one after another, with feverish eagerness, he made
+no reply; but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at a
+delirious patient. From the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt--or
+shall I say, saw--as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin silvery
+thread, shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeply
+sunk in the yellow old face. It seemed to penetrate into my brain
+and heart like an arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom every
+thought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and very soon the
+double sensation became intolerable.
+
+To break the spell I defied him to tell me what he had found in my
+thoughts. Calmly came the correct answer--Extreme anxiety for a female
+relative, her husband and children, who were inhabiting a house the
+correct description of which he gave as though he knew it as well
+as myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend, the Bonze, to
+whose indiscretions, I thought, I was indebted for the quick reply.
+Remembering however that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearance
+of my sister's house, that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and,
+as friends, faithful to death--I felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atone
+for it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could
+tell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of mine.
+The foreigner--was the reply--would never believe in the words, or trust
+to the knowledge of any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell
+him, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later, and the
+inquirer find himself as miserable as before. There was but one means;
+and that was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and
+thus learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placed
+by a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
+
+I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and pretenders to
+clairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had, therefore, nothing
+against the process itself. Even in the midst of my never-ceasing
+mental agony, I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the
+operation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I silently bowed
+consent.
+
+
+III
+
+PSYCHIC MAGIC
+
+The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, and
+finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who darts
+his Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a
+little bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetable
+paper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with which
+he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the _Naiden_ character--a
+peculiar style of written language used only for religious and mystical
+purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his clothes a small
+round mirror of steel of extraordinary brilliancy, and placing it
+before my eyes, asked me to look into it.
+
+I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently used
+in the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that under
+the direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in them the
+Daij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of their
+fate. I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit,
+who would answer my queries. What happened, however, was something of
+quite a different character.
+
+No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental squeamishness,
+produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position, touched the
+mirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of the
+hand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to "sit in the seat of
+the scorner" and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous point
+of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain, for an instant
+paralyzing its activity--
+
+                                           ... that fear
+    When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?
+
+No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuading
+myself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the nature
+of which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, that
+crept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein
+a sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly
+serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of the
+hand I dropped the--I blush to write the adjective--"magic" mirror, and
+could not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I was
+reclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle between
+some undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to look into
+the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, the
+ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It was finally
+so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own defiant
+intensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table near the
+settee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I read the
+words, "The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy."
+This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto held me back from
+what I regarded as a degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me to
+challenge my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk and prepared
+to look into it.
+
+While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a few
+words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and suspicious
+glance at both. I was wrong once more.
+
+"The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at the
+same time a warning," remarked the Bonze. "If you are willing to see
+for yourself now, you will have--under the penalty of _seeing for ever,
+in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, and
+that against your will or inclination_--to submit to a regular course of
+purification, after you have learned what you want through the mirror."
+
+"What is this course, and what have I to promise?" I asked defiantly.
+
+"It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to the
+process, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to hold
+himself responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an
+_irresponsible_ seer of you. Will you do so, friend?"
+
+"There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything"--I
+sneeringly replied, adding under my breath--"something I doubt a good
+deal, so far."
+
+"Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain with
+yourself," was the solemn answer.
+
+I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which was
+remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just _seven minutes
+after five_.
+
+"Define well in your mind _what_ you would see and learn," said the
+"conjuror," placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructing
+me how to use them.
+
+His instructions were received by me with more impatience than
+gratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless I
+replied, while fixing the mirror:
+
+"_I desire but one thing--to learn the reason or reasons why my sister
+has so suddenly ceased writing to me._"...
+
+Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the two
+witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide the
+point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing in
+the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this process
+lasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able to
+settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall every
+detail of the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror with
+the left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic characters
+between the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden I
+seemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. The
+passage from the active waking state to one that I could compare with
+nothing I had ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes
+had ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight
+of the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could nevertheless
+distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaning
+forward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation of
+an involuntary rush forward, of _snapping_ off, so to say, from my
+place--I had almost said from my body. And, then, while every one of
+my other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I thought,
+unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid glimpse than they had
+ever had in reality, of my sister's new house at Nuremberg, which I had
+never visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery with which
+I had never been very familiar. Together with this, and while feeling
+in my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing consciousness--dying
+persons must feel so, no doubt--the very last, vague thought, so weak
+as to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, _very_
+ridiculous.... This _feeling_--for such it was rather than a thought--was
+interrupted, suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear _mental
+vision_ (I cannot characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which
+I regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on the
+settee, dead to all intents and purposes, but still staring with the
+cold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with
+his two emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over _its_
+white face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt
+at that instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going,
+in thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old
+men, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in a
+reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from "me." A
+few more grotesque, distorted shadows before "my" sight; and, with a
+last feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise _who then was I
+now, since I was not that corpse_--a great veil of darkness fell over
+me, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.
+
+
+IV
+
+A VISION OF HORROR
+
+How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had once
+more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing that
+I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strange
+sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on my
+part, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself to
+me was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, and
+stifling air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of the
+presence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, to
+repeat my last sentence, "I desire but one thing: to learn the reason
+or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me"--but the
+only words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, "_to learn_,"
+and these, instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back to
+me in my own voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me.
+In short, they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
+
+One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
+Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myself
+standing--actually standing--underground, as it seemed. I was compactly
+and thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left,
+with earth, and _in_ the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemed
+quite immaterial and transparent to _my senses_. I did not realize
+for one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that
+_seeming_ fact! One second more, one short instant, and I perceived--oh,
+inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then, although I
+perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far more clearly
+than ever I had done before, I did not seem to be touched in any other
+way by what I saw. Yes--I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a plain
+unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch of the pauper,
+in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly saw a hideous,
+grinning skull, a man's skeleton, mutilated and broken in many of its
+parts, as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the
+defunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture. "Who can
+it be?"--I thought.
+
+At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice--_my_
+voice ... "_the reason or reasons why_" ... it said; as though these
+words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of which
+it had just repeated the two words "to learn." It sounded near, and
+yet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea that
+the long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions and
+discoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,
+almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of
+the sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself
+in my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,
+broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice....
+
+Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, and
+to me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined together
+one to the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, and
+I recognized in these disfigured remains--with some surprise, but not
+a trace of feeling at the sight--my sister's dead husband, my own
+brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. "How was it,
+and how did he come to die such a terrible death?"--I asked myself. To
+put oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantly
+solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when, as if in a
+panorama, I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl's death, in all
+its horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one of
+which, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Here
+he is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect of
+more lucrative employment from his principal, examining and trying in a
+wood-sawing factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America.
+He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten
+a screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel
+in full motion, and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his
+limbs half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the
+mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead,
+mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of palpitating flesh
+and blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap to
+the hospital, hear the brutally given order that the messengers of
+death should stop on their way at the house of the widow and orphans.
+I follow them, and find the unconscious family quietly assembled
+together. I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferent
+at the sight, only feeling highly interested in the coming scene. My
+heart, my feelings, even my personality, seemed to have disappeared, to
+have been left behind, to belong to somebody else.
+
+There "I" stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastly
+news. I realize clearly, without one moment's hesitation or mistake,
+the effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly, following and
+recording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner process
+that takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing not one single
+point.
+
+As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear
+the long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud of
+the living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I follow
+with curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation
+in her brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,
+precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibers,
+the instantaneous change of color in the cephalic extremity of the
+nervous system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright
+red and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden flash of
+a phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its sudden
+extinction followed by darkness--complete darkness in the region of
+memory--as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human shape,
+oozes out suddenly from the top of the head, expands, loses its form
+and scatters. And I say to myself: "This is insanity; life-long,
+incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed
+or extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the tabernacle for
+ever, ejected from it by the terrible force of the sudden blow.... The
+link between the animal and the divine essence is broken."... And as
+the unfamiliar term "divine" is mentally uttered _my_ "THOUGHT"--laughs.
+
+Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing
+emphatically and close by me the words ... "_why my sister has so
+suddenly ceased writing_."... And before the two final words "_to
+me_" have completed the sentence, I see a long series of sad events,
+immediately following the catastrophe.
+
+I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunatic
+asylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger children
+admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy
+of fifteen, and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
+strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carries
+away my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the events
+with all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to the
+smallest detail, with the utmost coolness.
+
+For, mark well: when I use such expressions as "horrors," etc., they
+are to be understood as an after-thought. During the whole time of the
+events described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My
+feelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external senses; it was
+only after "coming back" that I realized my irretrievable losses to
+their full extent.
+
+Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days, owing to
+sad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been told by anyone
+at that time, that man could act and think and feel, irrespective of
+his brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and to this day,
+for me, incomprehensible power, _he_ could be transported _mentally_,
+thousands of miles away from his body, there to witness not only
+present but also past events, and remember these by storing them in
+his memory--I would have proclaimed that man a madman. Alas, I can do
+so no longer, for I have become myself that "madman." Ten, twenty,
+forty, a hundred times during the course of this wretched life of mine,
+have I experienced and lived over such moments of existence, _outside
+of my body_. Accursed be that hour when this terrible power was first
+awakened in me! I have not even the consolation left of attributing
+such glimpses of events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see
+that which exists not in the realm they belong to. My visions have
+proved _invariably correct_. But to my narrative of woe.
+
+I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her new
+Israelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the one
+that had sent me "swimming" through the bowels of the earth, as I had
+thought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I fixed
+upon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial showed seven
+minutes and a half past five!... I had thus passed through these most
+terrible experiences, which it takes me hours to narrate, _in precisely
+half a minute of time_!
+
+But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief instant I
+recollected nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the time I
+had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi's
+hand and this second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I was just
+opening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi with his experiment, when
+the full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning-like
+into my brain. Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as though
+the whole creation were crushing me under its weight. For one moment I
+remained speechless, the picture of human ruin amid a world of death
+and desolation. My heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; and
+a hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever.
+
+
+V
+
+RETURN OF DOUBTS
+
+Then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt arose in my
+mind, which forthwith grew into a fierce desire of denying the truth of
+what I had seen. A stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as
+an empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained mind, took
+possession of me. Yes; it was but a lying vision, an idiotic cheating
+of my own senses, suggesting pictures of death and misery which had
+been evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental depression.
+
+"How could I see all that I have seen in less than half a minute?"--I
+exclaimed. "The theory of dreams, the rapidity with which the material
+changes on which our ideas in vision depend, are excited in the
+hemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for the long series of
+events I have seemed to experience. In dream alone can the relations
+of space and time be so completely annihilated. The Yamabooshi is for
+nothing in this disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that which
+has been sown by myself, and, by using some infernal drug, of which his
+tribe have the secret, he has contrived to make me lose consciousness
+for a few seconds and see that vision--as lying as it is horrid. Avaunt
+all such thoughts, I believe them not. In a few days there will be a
+steamer sailing for Europe.... I shall leave to-morrow!"
+
+This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud, regardless of the
+presence of my respected friend the Bonze, Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi.
+The latter was standing before me in the same position as when he
+placed the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at me calmly, I should
+perhaps say looking _through_ me, and in dignified silence. The Bonze,
+whose kind countenance was beaming with sympathy, approached me as he
+would a sick child, and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tears
+in his eyes, said: "Friend, you must not leave this city before you
+have been completely purified of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins
+(spirits), who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the
+places it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner Self must be closed
+against their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore, my son, and
+allow the holy Master yonder, to purify you at once."
+
+But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused. "The sap of
+reason" could no longer "quench the fire of passion," and at that
+moment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is a face
+I can never recall to my memory without genuine feeling; his, a name
+I will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that ever
+memorable hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I felt
+almost a hatred for the kind, good old man, I could not forgive him his
+interference in the present event. Hence, for all answer, therefore, he
+received from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on my part against
+the idea that I could ever regard the vision I had had, in any other
+light save that of an empty dream, and his Yamabooshi as anything
+better than an impostor. "I will leave to-morrow, had I to forfeit my
+whole fortune as a penalty"--I exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
+
+"You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so before the
+holy man has shut every entrance in you against intruders ever on
+the watch and ready to enter the open door," was the answer. "The
+Daij-Dzins will have the best of you."
+
+I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more brutally
+phrased inquiry about the _fees_ I was expected to give the Yamabooshi,
+for his experiment with me.
+
+"He needs no reward," was the reply. "The order he belongs to is the
+richest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for they are
+above all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him not, the good man
+who came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering, and to
+relieve you of mental agony."
+
+But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom. The spirit of
+rebellion and pride had taken possession of me, and made me disregard
+every feeling of personal friendship, or even of simple propriety.
+Luckily for me, on turning round to order the mendicant monk out of my
+presence, I found he had gone.
+
+I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure to fear
+at having been detected and understood.
+
+Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognize
+the Yamabooshi's power, and that the peace of my whole life was
+departing with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail.
+Even the fell demon of my long fears--uncertainty--was now entirely
+overpowered by that fiend scepticism--the silliest of all. A dull,
+morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses,
+and a determined will to regard the whole vision as a fancy of my
+overwrought mind, had taken firm hold of me.
+
+"My mind," I argued, "what is it? Shall I believe with the
+superstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and gray
+matter is indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and see
+independently of my physical senses? Never! As well believe in the
+planetary 'intelligences' of the astrologer, as in the 'Daij-Dzins' of
+my credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confess
+one's belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that these
+worthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals,
+as to give one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to
+have guided my 'soul' in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh at
+the absurd idea. I regard it as a personal insult to the intellect
+and rational reasoning powers of a man, to speak of invisible
+creatures, '_subjective_ intelligences,' and all that kind of insane
+superstition." In short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his
+protests, and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever.
+
+Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman, doing
+all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of my
+having gone suddenly mad. But his admirable forbearance proved more
+than equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once more, for the
+sake of my whole future, to submit to certain "necessary purificatory
+rites."
+
+"Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing by the air-pump
+of wholesome unbelief, than in the dim fog of silly superstition,"
+I argued, paraphrazing Richter's remark. "I will not believe," I
+repeated; "but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my sister
+and her family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe."
+
+This final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. His
+earnest prayer not to depart before I had seen the Yamabooshi once
+more, received no attention from me.
+
+"Friend of a foreign land!"--he cried, "I pray that you may not repent
+of your unbelief and rashness. May the 'Holy One' (Kwan-On, the Goddess
+of Mercy) protect you from the Dzins! For, since you refuse to submit
+to the process of purification at the hands of the holy Yamabooshi,
+he is powerless to defend you from the evil influences evoked by your
+unbelief and defiance of truth. But let me, at this parting hour, I
+beseech you, let me, an older man who wishes you well, warn you once
+more and persuade you of things you are still ignorant of. May I speak?"
+
+"Go on and have your say," was the ungracious assent. "But let me warn
+you, in my turn, that nothing you can say can make of me a believer in
+your disgraceful superstitions." This was added with a cruel feeling of
+pleasure in bestowing one more needless insult.
+
+But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others.
+Never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting words, the
+pitying, remorseful look on his face when he found that it was, indeed,
+all to no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference he had only
+led me to my destruction.
+
+"Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time," he began, "learn that
+unless the holy and venerable man, who, to relieve your distress,
+opened your 'soul vision,' is permitted to complete his work, your
+future life will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguard
+you against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character.
+Unless you consent to it of your own free will, however, you will have
+to be left in the power of _Forces_ which will harass and persecute you
+to the verge of insanity. Know that the development of 'Long Vision'
+(clairvoyance)--which is accomplished _at will_ only by those for whom
+the Mother of Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no secrets--must, in the
+case of the beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins (elemental
+spirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence wicked. Know also that,
+while the Arihat, 'the destroyer of the enemy,' who has subjected and
+made of these creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he who
+has no power over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in your
+great pride and ignorance, but listen further. During the time of the
+vision and while the inner perceptions are directed towards the events
+they seek, the Daij-Dzin has the seer--when, like yourself, he is an
+inexperienced tyro--entirely in its power; and for the time being _that
+seer is no longer himself_. He partakes of the nature of his 'guide.'
+The Daij-Dzin, which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance
+vile, making of him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself.
+Bereft of his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence during
+the time of such connection, he will feel no human emotions, neither
+pity nor fear, love nor mercy."
+
+"Hold!" I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought
+back to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed
+my sister's despair and sudden loss of reason in my "hallucination."
+"Hold!... But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any
+sense in your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerous
+why have advised the experiment at all?"--I added mockingly.
+
+"It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could have resulted from
+it, had you kept your promise to submit to purification," was the sad
+and humble reply. "I wished you well, my friend, and my heart was nigh
+breaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment is harmless
+when directed by _one who knows_, and becomes dangerous only when the
+final precaution is neglected. It is the 'Master of Visions,' he who
+has opened an entrance into your soul, who has to close it by using the
+Seal of Purification against any further and deliberate ingress of...."
+
+"The 'Master of Visions,' forsooth!" I cried, brutally interrupting
+him, "say rather the Master of Imposture!"
+
+The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful to
+behold that I perceived I had gone too far; but it was too late.
+
+"Farewell, then!" said the old bonze, rising; and after performing the
+usual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora left the house in dignified
+silence.
+
+
+VI
+
+I DEPART--BUT NOT ALONE
+
+Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerable
+friend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for ever
+memorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more than
+irreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he so justly
+respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and pride
+was too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment of
+remorse. What was it that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath,
+that when, for one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposed
+grievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed myself back into a
+kind of artificial fury against him. He had only accomplished what he
+had been expected to do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so,
+but it was I myself who had deprived him of the possibility of doing
+more, even for my own protection, if I might believe the Bonze--a man
+whom I knew to be thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at
+having been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, or
+was it the fear of remorse that made me rake together, in my heart,
+during those evil hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult to
+that same suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked,
+"is like the heart in which it grows:...
+
+                         ... if proud and gloomy,
+    It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost,
+    Weeps only tears of blood."
+
+Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort which
+caused me to remain so obdurate, and led me to excuse, under the plea
+of terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had heaped
+upon the head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest. However,
+it was now too late in the day to recall the words of offence I had
+uttered; and all I could do was to promise myself the satisfaction of
+writing him a friendly letter, as soon as I reached home. Fool, blind
+fool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was! So sure did I
+feel, that my vision was due merely to some trick of the Yamabooshi,
+that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in writing to the
+Bonze that I had been right in answering his sad words of parting
+with an incredulous smile, as my sister and family were all in good
+health--happy!
+
+I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember his
+words of warning!
+
+From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived a
+great change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to the
+mental depression I had struggled against for so many months. During
+the day I very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes,
+losing sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights were
+disturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at times horrible. Good sailor I
+certainly was; and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the ocean
+as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt a strange
+giddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers assumed at
+such times the most grotesque appearances. Thus, a young German I used
+to know well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old
+father, whom we had laid in the little burial place of the European
+colony some three years before. We were talking on deck of the defunct
+and of a certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner's head
+appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A thick
+greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and upon
+his healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim old head I
+had myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another occasion,
+as the captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had helped to
+secure and lodge in jail, I saw near him the yellow, villainous face
+of a man answering to his description. I kept silence about such
+hallucinations; but as they became more and more frequent, I felt very
+much disturbed, though still attributing them to natural causes, such
+as I had read about in medical books.
+
+One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and loud cry of distress.
+It was a woman's voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of terror
+and of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on land,
+in a strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperately
+struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her in
+her own room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door,
+I saw listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
+expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognized
+it: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dream
+I had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foul
+crime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant.... But who was the
+victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized the
+situation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my own
+child-niece.
+
+But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the nature of that
+despair born of affection that fills one's heart, at the sight of a
+wrong done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing but
+a manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the
+weak and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seized
+the wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with powerful
+grasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to feel my hand.
+The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful
+arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunny
+locks, felled the child to the ground. It was with a loud cry of the
+indignation of a stranger, not with that of a tigress defending her
+cub, that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle him.
+I then remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow myself, I was
+grasping but another shadow!....
+
+My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer. They
+were attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take anyone into my
+confidence; but, from that day forward, my life became a long series of
+mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness
+of some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whether
+past, present or even future--as I ascertained later on. It was as
+though some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of making
+me go through the vision of everything that was bestial, malignant
+and hopeless, in this world of misery. No radiant vision of beauty
+or virtue ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe and
+wretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of
+murder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I was
+brought face to face with the vilest results of man's passions, the
+most terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings.
+
+Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he spoke of
+Daij-Dzins to whom I left "an ingress" "a door open" in me? Nonsense!
+There must be some physiological, abnormal change in me. Once at
+Nuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken by
+my fears--I dared not hope for no misfortune at all--these meaningless
+visions will disappear as they came. The very fact that my fancy
+follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of human
+passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof to me, of their
+unreality.
+
+"If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter, the object
+of the physical senses; and if perception with its modes is only the
+result of the organization of the brain, then should we be naturally
+attracted but to the material, the earthly".... I thought I heard the
+familiar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections, and repeating
+an often used argument of his in his discussions with me.
+
+"There are two planes of visions before men," I again heard him say,
+"the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the efflux from
+the eternal light; and the plane of restless, ever changing matter, the
+light in which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe."
+
+
+VII
+
+ETERNITY IN A SHORT DREAM
+
+In those days I could hardly bring myself to realize, even for a
+moment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind of spirits, whether good
+or bad. I now understood, if I did not believe, what was meant by the
+term, though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove
+some physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To fortify my
+unbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my memory all the arguments
+used against a faith in such superstitions, that I had ever read or
+heard. I recalled the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm reasoning
+of Hume, and I repeated to myself _ad nauseam_ the words of Rousseau,
+who said that superstition, "the disturber of Society," could never
+be too strongly attacked. "Why should the sight, the phantasmagoria,
+rather"--I argued--"of that which we know in a waking sense to be false,
+come to affect us at all?" Why should--
+
+    Names, whose sense we see not
+    Fray us with things that be not?
+
+One day the old captain was narrating to us the various superstitions
+to which sailors were addicted; a pompous English missionary remarked
+that Fielding had declared long ago that "superstition renders a man a
+fool,"--after which he hesitated for an instant, and abruptly stopped.
+I had not taken any part in the general conversation; but no sooner
+had the reverend speaker relieved himself of the quotation, than I saw
+in that halo of vibrating light, which I now noticed almost constantly
+over every human head on the steamer, the words of Fielding's next
+proposition--"and _scepticism makes him mad_."
+
+I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend to seership,
+that they often see the thoughts of people traced in the aura of those
+present. Whatever "aura" may mean with others, I had now a personal
+experience of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently disgusted
+with the discovery! I--a _clairvoyant_! a new horror added to my life,
+an absurd and ridiculous gift developed, which I shall have to conceal
+from all, feeling ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy. At
+this moment my hatred to the Yamabooshi, and even to my venerable old
+friend, the Bonze, knew no bounds. The former had evidently by his
+manipulations over me while I was lying unconscious, touched some
+unknown physiological spring in my brain, and by loosing it had called
+forth a faculty generally hidden in the human constitution; and it was
+the Japanese priest who had introduced the wretch into my house!
+
+But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and could be of no
+avail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and in a few
+more days we should be at Hamburg. Then would my doubts and fears be
+set at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that although
+clairvoyance, as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot, may
+have some truth in it, the discernment of such events at a distance,
+as I had _dreamed of_, was an impossibility for human faculties.
+Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart was sick with
+fear, and full of the blackest presentiments; I _felt_ that my doom
+was closing. I suffered terribly, my nervous and mental prostration
+becoming intensified day by day.
+
+The night before we entered port I had a dream.
+
+I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,
+whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as "I,"
+realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its own
+extinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preserved
+heat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease its
+activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several minutes.
+Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my dream that
+while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf "no mortal e'er
+repassed," its consciousness was still in the gray twilight, the
+first shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my THOUGHT wrapped, as I
+believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality, was
+watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches of its own
+dissolution, _i.e._, of its _annihilation_. "I" was hastening to
+record my last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal oblivion
+should envelope me, before I had time to feel and _enjoy_, the great,
+the supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions were
+true, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of conscious
+being. Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Huge
+gray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first, then with
+accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with an almost
+vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that motion had taken place only
+for purposes of brewing darkness, the object once reached, it slackened
+its speed, and as the darkness became gradually transformed into
+intense blackness, it ceased altogether. There was nothing now within
+my immediate perceptions, but that fathomless black Space, as dark as
+pitch: to me it appeared as limitless and as silent as the shoreless
+Ocean of Eternity upon which Time, the progeny of man's brain, is for
+ever gliding, but which it can never cross.
+
+Dream is defined by Cato as "but the image of our hopes and fears."
+Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream of mine,
+calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt
+rather relieved at the thought--probably owing to my recent mental
+suffering--that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I loved,
+of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The constant
+anguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heart
+for many a long and weary month, had now become unbearable; and
+if as Seneca thinks, death is but "the ceasing to be what we were
+before," it was better that I should die. The body is dead; "I," its
+consciousness--that which is all that remains of me now, for a few
+moments longer--am preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get
+weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time, until the longed
+for oblivion envelopes me completely in its cold shroud. Sweet is the
+magic hand of Death, the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamless
+is sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcome
+guest.... A calm and peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of the
+Ocean of life, whose breakers lash in vain the rock-bound shores of
+Death. Happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of its
+black gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about by the
+angry waves of sentient life. Moored in it for evermore, needing no
+longer either sail or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then,
+O Death, at this tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,
+having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I now readily
+give up!...
+
+While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I bent
+over, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding darkness
+oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied I found
+in it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet ... how
+very strange! If real, final Death takes place in our consciousness;
+if after the bodily death, "I" and my conscious perceptions are
+one--how is it that these perceptions do not become weaker, why does
+my _brain_-action seem as vigorous as ever now ... that I am _de
+facto_ dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety, the "heavy
+heart" so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it even seems to become
+worse ... unspeakably so!... How long it takes for full oblivion to
+arrive!... Ah, here's my body again!... Vanished out of sight for a
+second or two, it reappears before me once more.... How white and
+ghastly it looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead, since "I,"
+its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy that we still
+are, that we live and think, disconnected from our creator and its
+ideating cell.
+
+Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progress
+of dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal on
+the brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its cranial
+cavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of the
+skull, and even _touched the brain-matter_.... How, or with _whose
+hands_, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the slimy,
+intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me, in that
+dream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirely
+congealed and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a change
+that would no longer permit any molecular action, it became impossible
+for me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself.
+Here was I,--or my consciousness, which is all one--standing apparently
+entirely disconnected from my brain which could no longer function....
+But I had no time left for reflection. A new and most extraordinary
+change in my perceptions had taken place and now engrossed my whole
+attention.... What _does_ this signify?...
+
+The same darkness was around me as before, a black, impenetrable space,
+extending in every direction. Only now, right before me, in whatever
+direction I was looking, moving with me which way soever I moved,
+there was a gigantic round clock; a disk, whose large white face shone
+ominously on the ebony-black background. As I looked at its huge dial,
+and at the pendulum moving to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, as
+if its swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles pointing to
+_seven minutes past five_. "The hour at which my torture had commenced
+at Kioto!" I had barely found time to think of the coincidence, when,
+to my unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the same, the
+identical, process that I had been made to experience on that memorable
+and fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly through the earth;
+I found myself once more in the pauper's grave and recognized my
+brother-in-law in the mangled remains; I witnessed his terrible death;
+entered my sister's house; followed her agony, and saw her go mad. I
+went over the same scenes without missing a single detail of them. But,
+alas! I was no longer iron-bound in the calm indifference that had then
+been mine, and which in that first vision had left me as unfeeling to
+my great misfortune as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My
+mental tortures were now becoming beyond description and well-nigh
+unbearable. Even the settled despair, the never ceasing anxiety I was
+constantly experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream and
+in the face of this repetition of visions and events, as an hour of
+darkened sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered in
+this wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction of
+the survival of man's consciousness after death--for in that dream I
+firmly believed that my body was dead--added the most terrifying of all!
+
+The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene,
+I saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not
+of long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the
+colossal disk at--_seven minutes and a-half past five_ o'clock. But,
+before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved slowly
+backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and--O cursed
+fate!... I found myself driven into a repetition of the same series
+over again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard, and
+suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed through every
+mental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to see the fatal dial
+and its needle--after what appeared to me an eternity--moved, as before,
+only half a minute forward. I beheld it, with renewed terror, moving
+back again, and felt myself propelled forward anew. And so it went
+on, and on, and on, time after time, in what seemed to me an endless
+succession, a series which never had any beginning, nor would it ever
+have an end....
+
+Worst of all; my consciousness, my "I," had apparently acquired the
+phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplating
+itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in
+half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various events
+of my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilar
+circumstances; though predominant over all was my _spiritual_
+experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous _fugue_ in _Don Giovanni_,
+the heart-rending notes of Elvira's _aria_ of despair ring high above,
+but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
+seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes,
+the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision,
+the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of my
+despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes
+and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was living
+through again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was a
+maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoria
+from real life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time,
+examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my sister's
+husband; following with the same indifference the effects of the
+news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and feeling _at the
+same time_ hell-torture for these very events, as when I returned to
+consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical discourses of the
+Bonze, every word of which I heard and understood, and was trying
+to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a youth, hearing my
+mother's and my sweet sister's voices, admonishing me and teaching duty
+to all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering at
+his aged father who thanks me for having saved a "soul" yet unprepared
+to meet his Maker.
+
+"Speak of _dual_ consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!"--I cried, in
+one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me physical
+also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killed
+a dozen living men; "speak of your psychological and physiological
+experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and book-learning!
+Here am I to give you the lie...." And now I was reading the works and
+holding converse with learned professors and lecturers, who had led
+me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing the impossibility of
+consciousness divorced from its brain, I was shedding tears of blood
+over the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible than
+all: I knew, _as only a liberated consciousness can know_, that all I
+had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was seeing and hearing
+over and over again now, was true in every point and detail, that it
+was a long string of ghastly and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
+
+For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention on
+the needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and
+was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that
+consciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be
+my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
+experience how the condemned sinners would feel--"were not eternal
+damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever
+progressing Universe"--I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; at
+this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness--now my synonym
+for "I"--had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims,
+of denying all their propositions, all--save ITSELF.... No; I denied the
+independent nature of my consciousness no longer, for I knew it now
+to be such. But is it _eternal_ withal? O thou incomprehensible and
+terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?--since
+there is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when didst thou
+first appear, if thou art not a part of the cold body lying yonder?
+And whither dost thou lead me, who am thyself, and shall our thought
+and fancy have an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomable
+REALITY, and impenetrable MYSTERY! Oh, I would fain annihilate thee....
+"Soul-Vision"!--who speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says
+that I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man, after all.... I
+deny this. My Soul, my vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired
+with my body, with the gray matter of my brain. This "I" of mine, this
+consciousness, is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in
+which the Bonze felt so anxious I should believe may be true.... Why
+not? Is not the flower born year after year from the same root? Hence
+this "I" once separated from its brain, losing its balance, and calling
+forth such a host of visions ... before reincarnating....
+
+I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I was
+watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of the
+depths of its white face, saying: "In this case, I fear, _you would
+only have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,
+during a period which, however short, would seem to you an
+eternity_."...
+
+The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of my
+old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; and
+I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint with
+terror.
+
+
+VIII
+
+A TALE OF WOE
+
+We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who could
+hardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes I started
+for Nuremberg.
+
+Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the
+correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse than
+any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to
+the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible
+tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killed
+under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidly
+sinking towards her end; my niece--the sweet flower of nature's fairest
+work--dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little children dead of a
+contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew at sea,
+no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace, scattered;
+and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolation
+and dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I sank
+helpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which rose before me
+all at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The last thing
+I heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a remark of the
+Burgmeister: "Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the city
+authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of coming home
+to take charge of your young relatives, we might have placed them
+elsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No one knew that
+the children had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers and
+had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively strangers in
+Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardly
+have expected anything else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow."
+
+It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have saved
+my young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect I
+had not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly
+advice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities some
+weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was all
+this, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyance
+and clairaudience--the possibility of which I had so long denied--that
+brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the censure
+of my fellow-creatures, but I could never escape the stings of my
+conscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart--no, not as long as I
+lived. I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts, my early
+education, I cursed myself, and the whole world....
+
+For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I had
+a duty to perform to the dead and to the living. But my sister once
+rescued from the pauper's asylum, placed under the care of the best
+physicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and
+the Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodged
+in jail--my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a
+week after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac,
+helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I lay
+between life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of the
+best physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and--to my
+life-long sorrow--they proclaimed me saved.
+
+I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to drag the loathsome
+burden of life henceforth alone, and in constant remorse; hoping for
+no help or remedy on earth, and still refusing to believe in the
+possibility of anything better than a short survival of consciousness
+beyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added only one more
+drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They were hardly soothed by the
+immediate return, during the first days of my convalescence, of those
+unwelcome and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality I
+could deny no more. Alas the day! they were no longer in my sceptical,
+blind mind--
+
+    The children of an idle brain
+    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
+
+but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferings
+of my fellow creatures, of my best friends.... Thus I found myself
+doomed, whenever I was left for a moment alone, to the helpless
+torture of a chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night,
+as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself led to my
+sister's bedside, forced to watch there hour after hour, and see the
+silent disintegration of her wasted organism; to witness and feel the
+sufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or
+convey to her perceptions. But there was something still more horrible
+to barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had to look, by
+day, at the childish innocent face of my young niece, so sublimely
+simple and guileless in her pollution; and to witness, by night, how
+the full knowledge and recollection of her dishonor, of her young life
+now for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as soon as she was
+asleep. These dreams took an objective form to me, as they had done
+on the steamer; I had to live them over again, night after night,
+and feel the same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the
+reality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our bodies
+lies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis which may contain
+in its turn the butterfly--the symbol of the soul--I no longer remained
+indifferent, as of yore, to what I witnessed in my Soul-life. Something
+had suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy cocoon.
+Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the identification of
+my inner nature with a Daij-Dzin; my visions arose in consequence of a
+direct personal psychic development, the fiendish creatures only taking
+care that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature.
+Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my dying sister's emaciated body,
+not a thrill of horror in my niece's restless sleep at the recollection
+of the crime perpetrated upon her, an innocent child, but found a
+responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The deep fountain of sympathetic
+love and sorrow had gushed out from the physical heart, and was now
+loudly echoed by the awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had I
+to drain the cup of misery to the very dregs! Woe is me, it was a daily
+and nightly torture! Oh, how I mourned over my proud folly; how I was
+punished for having neglected to avail myself at Kioto of the proffered
+purification, for now I had come to believe even in the efficacy of
+the latter. The Daij-Dzin had indeed obtained control over me; and the
+fiend had let loose all the dogs of hell upon his victim....
+
+At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor insane
+martyr dropped into her dark, and now welcome grave, leaving behind
+her, but for a few short months, her young, her first-born, daughter.
+Consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame. Hardly a year
+after my arrival, I was left alone in the whole wide world, my only
+surviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his sea-faring
+career.
+
+And now, the sequel of my sad, sad story is soon told. A wreck, a
+prematurely old man, looking at thirty as though sixty winters had
+passed over my doomed head, and owing to the never-ceasing visions,
+myself daily on the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate
+resolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the Yamabooshi. I
+would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man, and would not
+leave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised, the
+Frankenstein with whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would not
+part, through my insolent pride and unbelief.
+
+Three months later I was in my Japanese home again, and I at once
+sought out my old, venerable Bonze, Tamoora Hideyeri, I now implored
+him to take me without an hour's delay, to the Yamabooshi, the innocent
+cause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the last, the supreme
+seal on my doom and tenfold intensified my despair. The Yamabooshi had
+left the country for lands unknown! He had departed one fine morning
+into the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to custom, would be
+absent, unless natural death shortened the period, for no less than
+seven years!...
+
+In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to other learned
+Yamabooshis; and though well aware how useless it was in my case to
+seek efficient cure from any other "adept," my excellent old friend
+did everything he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was to
+no purpose, and the canker-worm of my life's despair could not be
+thoroughly extricated. I found from them that not one of these learned
+men could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of clairvoyant
+obsession. It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them to
+show futurity, or things that had already come to pass, who alone had
+full control over them. With kind sympathy, which I had now learned
+to appreciate, the holy men invited me to join the group of their
+disciples, and learn from them what I could do for myself. "Will alone,
+faith in your own soul powers, can help you now," they said. "But it
+may take several years to undo even a part of the great mischief;"
+they added. "A Daij-Dzin is easily dislodged in the beginning; if left
+alone, he takes possession of a man's nature, and it becomes almost
+impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim."
+
+Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do, I
+gratefully assented, doing my best to believe in all that these holy
+men believed in, and yet ever failing to do so in my heart. The demon
+of unbelief and all-denial seemed rooted in me more firmly even than
+the Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was not to
+lose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I proceeded without delay
+to free myself from the world and my commercial obligations, in order
+to live for several years an independent life. I settled my accounts
+with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm.
+Notwithstanding considerable financial losses resulting from such a
+precipitate liquidation, I found myself, after closing the accounts,
+a far richer man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no longer
+any attraction for me, now that I had no one to share it with, no one
+to work for. Life had become a burden; and such was my indifference to
+my future, that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew--in case
+he should return alive from his sea voyage--I should have neglected
+entirely even a small provision for myself, had not my native partner
+interfered and insisted upon my making it. I now recognized with
+Lao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,
+as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any tempest. Wealth
+is a weak anchor in days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatal
+counsellor. Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid aside
+for myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to assure me a small
+income for life, or if I ever left my new friends and instructors.
+Having settled my earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings at
+Kioto, I joined the "Masters of the Long Vision," who took me to their
+mysterious abode. There I remained for several years, studying very
+earnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing no one but a few of
+the members of our religious community.
+
+Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then, and
+many a secret folio from the library of Tzion-ene have I devoured,
+obtaining thereby mastery over several kinds of invisible beings
+of a lower order. But the great secret of power over the terrible
+Daij-Dzin I could not get. It remains in the possession of a very
+limited number of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the great
+majority of the Yamabooshis themselves being ignorant how to obtain
+such mastery over the dangerous Elemental. One who would reach such
+power of control would have to become entirely identified with the
+Yamabooshis, to accept their views and beliefs, and to attain the
+highest degree of Initiation. Very naturally, I was found unfit to
+join the Fraternity, owing to many insurmountable reasons besides my
+congenital and ineradicable scepticism, though I tried hard to believe.
+Thus, partially relieved of my affliction and taught how to conjure the
+unwelcome visions away, I still remained, and do remain to this day,
+helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now and then.
+
+It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted position
+of an independent Seer and Adept that I reluctantly gave up any further
+trial. Nothing had been heard of the holy man, the first innocent cause
+of my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who occasionally visited
+me in my retreat, either could not, or would not, inform me of the
+whereabouts of the Yamabooshi. When, therefore, I had to give up all
+hope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift, I resolved
+to return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the rest of my life.
+With this object in view, I purchased through my late partners the
+Swiss _chalet_ in which my hapless sister and I were born, where I had
+grown up under her care, and selected it for my future hermitage.
+
+When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer which took me back
+to my fatherland, the good old Bonze tried to console me for my
+disappointments. "My son," he said, "regard all that happened to you
+as your _Karma_--a just retribution. No one who has subjected himself
+willingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin can ever hope to become a _Rahat_
+(an Adept), a high-souled Yamabooshi--unless immediately purified.
+At best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose and to
+successfully fight off the fiend. _Like a scar left after a poisonous
+wound, the trace of a Daij-Dzin can never be effaced from the Soul
+until purified by a new rebirth._ Withal, feel not dejected, but be of
+good cheer in your affliction, since it has led you to acquire true
+knowledge, and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise rejected
+with contempt. And of this priceless knowledge, acquired through
+suffering and personal efforts--no Daij-Dzin can ever deprive you.
+Fare thee well, then, and may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen of
+Heaven, afford you comfort and protection."
+
+We parted, and since then I have led the life of an anchorite, in
+constant solitude and study. Though still occasionally afflicted,
+I do not regret the years I have passed under the instruction of
+the Yamabooshis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received. Of
+the priest Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affection
+and respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day of his
+death; an event which, with all its to me painful details, I had the
+unthanked-for privilege of witnessing across the seas, at the very hour
+in which it occurred.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES
+
+A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY[2]
+
+      [2] This story is given from the narrative of an eye-witness,
+      a Russian gentleman, very pious, and fully trustworthy.
+      Moreover, the facts are copied from the police records of P----.
+      The eyewitness in question attributes it, of course, partly to
+      divine interference and partly to the Evil One.--H. P. B.
+
+
+In one of the distant governments of the Russian empire, in a small
+town on the borders of Siberia, a mysterious tragedy occurred more
+than thirty years ago. About six versts from the little town of P----,
+famous for the wild beauty of its scenery, and for the wealth of its
+inhabitants--generally proprietors of mines and of iron foundries--stood
+an aristocratic mansion. Its household consisted of the master, a rich
+old bachelor and his brother, who was a widower and the father of
+two sons and three daughters. It was known that the proprietor, Mr.
+Izvertzoff, had adopted his brother's children, and, having formed an
+especial attachment for his eldest nephew, Nicolas, he had made him the
+sole heir of his numerous estates.
+
+Time rolled on. The uncle was getting old, the nephew was coming of
+age. Days and years had passed in monotonous serenity, when, on the
+hitherto clear horizon of the quiet family, appeared a cloud. On an
+unlucky day one of the nieces took it into her head to study the
+zither. The instrument being of purely Teutonic origin, and no teacher
+of it residing in the neighborhood, the indulgent uncle sent to St.
+Petersburg for both. After diligent search only one Professor could be
+found willing to trust himself in such close proximity to Siberia. It
+was an old German artist, who, sharing his affections equally between
+his instrument and a pretty blonde daughter, would part with neither.
+And thus it came to pass that one fine morning the old Professor
+arrived at the mansion, with his music box under one arm and his fair
+Munchen leaning on the other.
+
+From that day the little cloud began growing rapidly; for every
+vibration of the melodious instrument found a responsive echo in the
+old bachelor's heart. Music awakens love, they say, and the work begun
+by the zither was completed by Munchen's blue eyes. At the expiration
+of six months the niece had become an expert zither player, and the
+uncle was desperately in love.
+
+One morning, gathering his adopted family around him, he embraced them
+all very tenderly, promised to remember them in his will, and wound up
+by declaring his unalterable resolution to marry the blue-eyed Munchen.
+After this he fell upon their necks and wept in silent rapture. The
+family, understanding that they were cheated out of the inheritance,
+also wept; but it was for another cause. Having thus wept, they
+consoled themselves and tried to rejoice, for the old gentleman was
+sincerely beloved by all. Not all of them rejoiced, though. Nicolas,
+who had himself been smitten to the heart by the pretty German, and
+who found himself defrauded at once of his belle and of his uncle's
+money, neither rejoiced nor consoled himself, but disappeared for a
+whole day.
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Izvertzoff had given orders to prepare his traveling
+carriage on the following day, and it was whispered that he was going
+to the chief town of the district, at some distance from his home,
+with the intention of altering his will. Though very wealthy, he had
+no superintendent on his estate, but kept his books himself. The same
+evening after supper, he was heard in his room, angrily scolding his
+servant, who had been in his service for over thirty years. This man,
+Ivan, was a native of northern Asia, from Kamschatka; he had been
+brought up by the family in the Christian religion, and was thought to
+be very much attached to his master. A few days later, when the first
+tragic circumstance I am about to relate had brought all the police
+force to the spot, it was remembered that on that night Ivan was drunk;
+that his master, who had a horror of this vice had paternally thrashed
+him, and turned him out of his room, and that Ivan had been seen
+reeling out of the door, and had been heard to mutter threats.
+
+On the vast domain of Mr. Izvertzoff there was a curious cavern, which
+excited the curiosity of all who visited it. It exists to this day, and
+is well known to every inhabitant of P----. A pine forest, commencing
+a few feet from the garden gate, climbs in steep terraces up a long
+range of rocky hills, which it covers with a broad belt of impenetrable
+vegetation. The grotto leading into the cavern, which is known as the
+"Cave of the Echoes," is situated about half a mile from the site
+of the mansion, from which it appears as a small excavation in the
+hill-side, almost hidden by luxuriant plants, but not so completely
+as to prevent any person entering it from being readily seen from the
+terrace in front of the house. Entering the Grotto, the explorer finds
+at the rear a narrow cleft; having passed through which he emerges into
+a lofty cavern, feebly lighted through fissures in the vaulted roof,
+fifty feet from the ground. The cavern itself is immense, and would
+easily hold between two and three thousand people. A part of it, in the
+days of Mr. Izvertzoff, was paved with flagstones, and was often used
+in the summer as a ball-room by picnic parties. Of an irregular oval,
+it gradually narrows into a broad corridor, which runs for several
+miles underground, opening here and there into other chambers, as large
+and lofty as the ball-room, but, unlike this, impassable otherwise than
+in a boat, as they are always full of water. These natural basins have
+the reputation of being unfathomable.
+
+On the margin of the first of these is a small platform, with several
+mossy rustic seats arranged on it, and it is from this spot that the
+phenomenal echoes, which give the cavern its name, are heard in all
+their weirdness. A word pronounced in a whisper, or even a sigh, is
+caught up by endless mocking voices, and instead of diminishing in
+volume, as honest echoes do, the sound grows louder and louder at
+every successive repetition, until at last it bursts forth like the
+repercussion of a pistol shot, and recedes in a plaintive wail down the
+corridor.
+
+On the day in question, Mr. Izvertzoff had mentioned his intention of
+having a dancing party in this cave on his wedding day, which he had
+fixed for an early date. On the following morning, while preparing for
+his drive, he was seen by his family entering the grotto, accompanied
+only by his Siberian servant. Half-an-hour later, Ivan returned to the
+mansion for a snuff-box, which his master had forgotten in his room,
+and went back with it to the cave. An hour later the whole house was
+startled by his loud cries. Pale and dripping with water, Ivan rushed
+in like a madman, and declared that Mr. Izvertzoff was nowhere to be
+found in the cave. Thinking he had fallen into the lake, he had dived
+into the first basin in search of him and was nearly drowned himself.
+
+The day passed in vain attempts to find the body. The police filled the
+house, and louder than the rest in his despair was Nicolas, the nephew,
+who had returned home only to meet the sad tidings.
+
+A dark suspicion fell upon Ivan, the Siberian. He had been struck by
+his master the night before, and had been heard to swear revenge. He
+had accompanied him alone to the cave, and when his room was searched,
+a box full of rich family jewelry, known to have been carefully kept
+in Mr. Izvertzoff's apartment, was found under Ivan's bedding. Vainly
+did the serf call God to witness that the box had been given to him
+in charge by his master himself, just before they proceeded to the
+cave; that it was the latter's purpose to have the jewelry reset, as
+he intended it for a wedding present to his bride; and that he, Ivan,
+would willingly give his own life to recall that of his master, if
+he knew him to be dead. No heed was paid to him, however, and he was
+arrested and thrown into prison upon a charge of murder. There he was
+left, for under the Russian law a criminal cannot--at any rate, he could
+not in those days--be sentenced for a crime, however conclusive the
+circumstantial evidence, unless he confessed his guilt.
+
+After a week had passed in useless search, the family arrayed
+themselves in deep mourning; and, as the will as originally drawn
+remained without a codicil, the whole of the property passed into the
+hands of the nephew. The old teacher and his daughter bore this sudden
+reverse of fortune with true Germanic phlegm, and prepared to depart.
+Taking again his zither under one arm, the old man was about to lead
+away his Munchen by the other, when the nephew stopped him by offering
+himself as the fair damsel's husband in the place of his departed
+uncle. The change was found to be an agreeable one, and, without much
+ado, the young people were married.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten years rolled away, and we meet the happy family once more at the
+beginning of 1859. The fair Munchen had grown fat and vulgar. From
+the day of the old man's disappearance, Nicolas had become morose and
+retired in his habits, and many wondered at the change in him, for now
+he was never seen to smile. It seemed as if his only aim in life were
+to find out his uncle's murderer, or rather to bring Ivan to confess
+his guilt. But the man still persisted that he was innocent.
+
+An only son had been born to the young couple, and a strange child
+it was. Small, delicate, and ever ailing, his frail life seemed to
+hang by a thread. When his features were in repose, his resemblance
+to his uncle was so striking that the members of the family often
+shrank from him in terror. It was the pale shriveled face of a man
+of sixty upon the shoulders of a child nine years old. He was never
+seen either to laugh or to play, but, perched in his high chair, would
+gravely sit there, folding his arms in a way peculiar to the late Mr.
+Izvertzoff; and thus he would remain for hours, drowsy and motionless.
+His nurses were often seen furtively crossing themselves at night, upon
+approaching him, and not one of them would consent to sleep alone with
+him in the nursery. His father's behavior towards him was still more
+strange. He seemed to love him passionately, and at the same time to
+hate him bitterly. He seldom embraced or caressed the child, but, with
+livid cheek and staring eye, he would pass long hours watching him, as
+the child sat quietly in his corner, in his goblin-like, old-fashioned
+way.
+
+The child had never left the estate, and few outside the family knew of
+his existence.
+
+About the middle of July, a tall Hungarian traveler, preceded by a
+great reputation for eccentricity, wealth and mysterious powers,
+arrived at the town of P---- from the North, where, it was said, he had
+resided for many years. He settled in the little town, in company
+with a Shaman or South Siberian magician, on whom he was said to make
+mesmeric experiments. He gave dinners and parties, and invariably
+exhibited his Shaman, of whom he felt very proud, for the amusement of
+his guests. One day the notables of P---- made an unexpected invasion of
+the domains of Nicolas Izvertzoff, and requested the loan of his cave
+for an evening entertainment. Nicolas consented with great reluctance,
+and only after still greater hesitancy was he prevailed upon to join
+the party.
+
+The first cavern and the platform beside the bottomless lake glittered
+with lights. Hundreds of flickering candles and torches, stuck in
+the clefts of the rocks, illuminated the place and drove the shadows
+from the mossy nooks and corners, where they had crouched undisturbed
+for many years. The stalactites on the walls sparkled brightly, and
+the sleeping echoes were suddenly awakened by a joyous confusion of
+laughter and conversation. The Shaman, who was never lost sight of by
+his friend and patron, sat in a corner, entranced as usual. Crouched
+on a projecting rock, about midway between the entrance and the water,
+with his lemon-yellow, wrinkled face, flat nose, and thin beard, he
+looked more like an ugly stone idol than a human being. Many of the
+company pressed around him and received correct answers to their
+questions, the Hungarian cheerfully submitting his mesmerized "subject"
+to cross-examination.
+
+Suddenly one of the party, a lady, remarked that it was in that very
+cave that old Mr. Izvertzoff had so unaccountably disappeared ten years
+before. The foreigner appeared interested, and desired to learn more of
+the circumstances, so Nicolas was sought amid the crowd and led before
+the eager group. He was the host and he found it impossible to refuse
+the demanded narrative. He repeated the sad tale in a trembling voice,
+with a pallid cheek, and tears were seen glittering in his feverish
+eyes. The company were greatly affected, and encomiums upon the
+behavior of the loving nephew in honoring the memory of his uncle and
+benefactor were freely circulating in whispers, when suddenly the voice
+of Nicolas became choked, his eyes started from their sockets, and with
+a suppressed groan, he staggered back. Every eye in the crowd followed
+with curiosity his haggard look, as it fell and remained riveted upon a
+weazened little face, that peeped from behind the back of the Hungarian.
+
+"Where do you come from? Who brought you here, child?" gasped out
+Nicolas, as pale as death.
+
+"I was in bed, papa; this man came to me, and brought me here in his
+arms," answered the boy simply, pointing to the Shaman, beside whom
+he stood upon the rock, and who, with his eyes closed, kept swaying
+himself to and fro like a living pendulum.
+
+"That is very strange," remarked one of the guests, "for the man has
+never moved from his place."
+
+"Good God! what an extraordinary resemblance!" muttered an old resident
+of the town, a friend of the lost man.
+
+"You lie, child!" fiercely exclaimed the father. "Go to bed; this is no
+place for you."
+
+"Come, come," interposed the Hungarian, with a strange expression on
+his face, and encircling with his arm the slender childish figure; "the
+little fellow has seen the double of my Shaman, which roams sometimes
+far away from his body, and has mistaken the phantom for the man
+himself. Let him remain with us for a while."
+
+At these strange words the guests stared at each other in mute
+surprise, while some piously made the sign of the cross, spitting
+aside, presumably at the devil and all his works.
+
+"By-the-bye," continued the Hungarian with a peculiar firmness of
+accent, and addressing the company rather than any one in particular;
+"why should we not try, with the help of my Shaman, to unravel the
+mystery hanging over the tragedy? Is the suspected party still lying
+in prison? What? he has not confessed up to now? This is surely very
+strange. But now we will learn the truth in a few minutes! Let all keep
+silent!"
+
+He then approached the Tehuktchene, and immediately began his
+performance without so much as asking the consent of the master of
+the place. The latter stood rooted to the spot, as if petrified with
+horror, and unable to articulate a word. The suggestion met with
+general approbation, save from him; and the police inspector, Col. S----,
+especially approved of the idea.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said the mesmerizer in soft tones, "allow
+me for this once to proceed otherwise than in my general fashion. I
+will employ the method of native magic. It is more appropriate to this
+wild place, and far more effective as you will find, than our European
+method of mesmerization."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, he drew from a bag that never left his
+person, first a small drum, and then two little phials--one full of
+fluid, the other empty. With the contents of the former he sprinkled
+the Shaman, who fell to trembling and nodding more violently than ever.
+The air was filled with the perfume of spicy odors, and the atmosphere
+itself seemed to become clearer. Then, to the horror of those present,
+he approached the Tibetan, and taking a miniature stiletto from his
+pocket, he plunged the sharp steel into the man's forearm, and drew
+blood from it, which he caught in the empty phial. When it was half
+filled, he pressed the orifice of the wound with his thumb, and stopped
+the flow of blood as easily as if he had corked a bottle, after which
+he sprinkled the blood over the little boy's head. He then suspended
+the drum from his neck, and, with two ivory drum-sticks, which were
+covered with magic signs and letters, he began beating a sort of
+_reveille_, to drum up the spirits, as he said.
+
+The bystanders, half-shocked and half-terrified by these extraordinary
+proceedings, eagerly crowded round him, and for a few moments a dead
+silence reigned throughout the lofty cavern. Nicolas, with his face
+livid and corpse-like, stood speechless as before. The mesmerizer had
+placed himself between the Shaman and the platform, when he began
+slowly drumming. The first notes were muffled, and vibrated so softly
+in the air that they awakened no echo, but the Shaman quickened his
+pendulum-like motion and the child became restless. The drummer then
+began a slow chant, low, impressive and solemn.
+
+As the unknown words issued from his lips, the flames of the candles
+and torches wavered and flickered, until they began dancing in rhythm
+with the chant. A cold wind came wheezing from the dark corridors
+beyond the water, leaving a plaintive echo in its trail. Then a sort
+of nebulous vapor, seeming to ooze from the rocky ground and walls,
+gathered about the Shaman and the boy. Around the latter the aura was
+silvery and transparent, but the cloud which enveloped the former was
+red and sinister. Approaching nearer to the platform the magician beat
+a louder roll upon the drum, and this time the echo caught it up with
+terrific effect! It reverberated near and far in incessant peals; one
+wail followed another, louder and louder, until the thundering roar
+seemed the chorus of a thousand demon voices rising from the fathomless
+depths of the lake. The water itself, whose surface, illuminated by
+many lights, had previously been smooth as a sheet of glass, became
+suddenly agitated, as if a powerful gust of wind had swept over its
+unruffled face.
+
+Another chant, and a roll of the drum, and the mountain trembled to its
+foundation with the cannon-like peals which rolled through the dark
+and distant corridors. The Shaman's body rose two yards in the air,
+and nodding and swaying, sat, self-suspended like an apparition. But
+the transformation which now occurred in the boy chilled everyone, as
+they speechlessly watched the scene. The silvery cloud about the boy
+now seemed to lift him, too, into the air; but, unlike the Shaman, his
+feet never left the ground. The child began to grow, as though the work
+of years was miraculously accomplished in a few seconds. He became
+tall and large, and his senile features grew older with the ageing
+of his body. A few more seconds, and the youthful form had entirely
+disappeared. It was totally absorbed in another individuality, and to
+the horror of those present who had been familiar with his appearance,
+this individuality was that of old Mr. Izvertzoff, and on his temple
+was a large gaping wound, from which trickled great drops of blood.
+
+This phantom moved towards Nicolas, till it stood directly in front
+of him, while he, with his hair standing erect, with the look of a
+madman gazed at his own son, transformed into his uncle. The sepulchral
+silence was broken by the Hungarian, who, addressing the child phantom,
+asked him in solemn voice:
+
+"In the name of the great Master, of him who has all power, answer the
+truth, and nothing but the truth. Restless spirit, hast thou been lost
+by accident, or foully murdered?"
+
+The specter's lips moved, but it was the echo which answered for them
+in lugubrious shouts: "Murdered! murdered!! mur-der-ed!!!"
+
+"Where? How? By whom?" asked the conjuror.
+
+The apparition pointed a finger at Nicolas and, without removing its
+gaze or lowering its arm, retreated backwards slowly towards the lake.
+At every step it took, the younger Izvertzoff, as if compelled by some
+irresistible fascination, advanced a step towards it, until the phantom
+reached the lake, and the next moment was seen gliding on its surface.
+It was a fearful, ghostly scene!
+
+When he had come within two steps of the brink of the watery abyss, a
+violent convulsion ran through the frame of the guilty man. Flinging
+himself upon his knees, he clung to one of the rustic seats with a
+desperate clutch, and staring wildly, uttered a long piercing cry of
+agony. The phantom now remained motionless on the water, and bending
+its extended finger, slowly beckoned him to come. Crouched in abject
+terror, the wretched man shrieked until the cavern rang again and
+again: "I did not.... No, I did not murder you!"
+
+Then came a splash, and now it was the boy who was in the dark water,
+struggling for his life, in the middle of the lake, with the same
+motionless stern apparition brooding over him.
+
+"Papa! papa! Save me.... I am drowning!" ... cried a piteous little
+voice amid the uproar of the mocking echoes.
+
+"My boy!" shrieked Nicolas, in the accents of a maniac, springing to
+his feet. "My boy! Save him! Oh, save him!... Yes, I confess.... I am
+the murderer.... It is I who killed him!"
+
+Another splash, and the phantom disappeared. With a cry of horror the
+company rushed towards the platform; but their feet were suddenly
+rooted to the ground, as they saw amid the swirling eddies a whitish
+shapeless mass holding the murderer and the boy in tight embrace, and
+slowly sinking into the bottomless lake.
+
+On the morning after these occurrences, when, after a sleepless night,
+some of the party visited the residence of the Hungarian gentleman,
+they found it closed and deserted. He and the Shaman had disappeared.
+Many are among the old inhabitants of P---- who remember him; the Police
+Inspector, Col. S----, dying a few years ago in the full assurance that
+the noble traveler was the devil. To add to the general consternation
+the Izvertzoff mansion took fire on that same night and was completely
+destroyed. The Archbishop performed the ceremony of exorcism, but
+the locality is considered accursed to this day. The Government
+investigated the facts, and--ordered silence.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUMINOUS SHIELD
+
+
+We were a small and select party of light-hearted travelers. We had
+arrived at Constantinople a week before from Greece, and had devoted
+fourteen hours a day ever since to toiling up and down the steep
+heights of Pera, visiting bazaars, climbing to the tops of minarets and
+fighting our way through armies of hungry dogs, the traditional masters
+of the streets of Stamboul. Nomadic life is infectious, they say, and
+no civilization is strong enough to destroy the charm of unrestrained
+freedom when it has once been tasted. The gipsy cannot be tempted
+from his tent, and even the common tramp finds a fascination in his
+comfortless and precarious existence, that prevents him taking to any
+fixed abode and occupation. To guard my spaniel Ralph from falling a
+victim to this infection, and joining the canine Bedouins that infested
+the streets, was my chief care during our stay in Constantinople. He
+was a fine fellow, my constant companion and cherished friend. Afraid
+of losing him, I kept a strict watch over his movements; for the
+first three days, however, he behaved like a tolerably well-educated
+quadruped, and remained faithfully at my heels. At every impudent
+attack from his Mahomedan cousins, whether intended as a hostile
+demonstration or an overture of friendship, his only reply would be to
+draw in his tail between his legs, and with an air of dignified modesty
+seek protection under the wing of one or other of our party.
+
+As he had thus from the first shown so decided an aversion to bad
+company, I began to feel assured of his discretion, and by the end
+of the third day I had considerably relaxed my vigilance. This
+carelessness on my part, however, was soon punished, and I was made to
+regret my misplaced confidence. In an unguarded moment he listened to
+the voice of some four-footed syren, and the last I saw of him was the
+end of his bushy tail, vanishing round the corner of a dirty, winding
+little back street.
+
+Greatly annoyed, I passed the remainder of the day in a vain search
+after my dumb companion. I offered twenty, thirty, forty francs reward
+for him. About as many vagabond Maltese began a regular chase, and
+towards evening we were invaded in our hotel by the whole troop, every
+man of them with a more or less mangy cur in his arms, which he tried
+to persuade me was my lost dog. The more I denied, the more solemnly
+they insisted, one of them actually going down on his knees, snatching
+from his bosom an old corroded metal image of the Virgin, and swearing
+a solemn oath that the Queen of Heaven herself had kindly appeared to
+him to point out the right animal. The tumult had increased to such
+an extent that it looked as if Ralph's disappearance was going to be
+the cause of a small riot, and finally our landlord had to send for
+a couple of Kavasses from the nearest police station, and have this
+regiment of bipeds and quadrupeds expelled by main force. I began to
+be convinced that I should never see my dog again, and I was the
+more despondent since the porter of the hotel, a semi-respectable
+old brigand, who, to judge by appearances, had not passed more than
+half-a-dozen years at the galleys, gravely assured me that all my pains
+were useless, as my spaniel was undoubtedly dead and devoured too by
+this time, the Turkish dogs being very fond of their more toothsome
+English brothers.
+
+All this discussion had taken place in the street at the door of the
+hotel, and I was about to give up the search for that night at least,
+and enter the hotel, when an old Greek lady, a Phanariote who had been
+hearing the fracas from the steps of a door close by, approached our
+disconsolate group and suggested to Miss H----, one of our party, that we
+should inquire of the dervishes concerning the fate of Ralph.
+
+"And what can the dervishes know about my dog?" said I, in no mood to
+joke, ridiculous as the proposition appeared.
+
+"The holy men know all, Kyrea (Madam)," said she, somewhat
+mysteriously. "Last week I was robbed of my new satin pelisse, that
+my son had just brought me from Broussa, and, as you all see, I have
+recovered it and have it on my back now."
+
+"Indeed? Then the holy men have also managed to metamorphose your new
+pelisse into an old one by all appearances," said one of the gentlemen
+who accompanied us, pointing as he spoke to a large rent in the back,
+which had been clumsily repaired with pins.
+
+"And that is just the most wonderful part of the whole story," quietly
+answered the Phanariote, not in the least disconcerted. "They showed me
+in the shining circle the quarter of the town, the house, and even the
+room in which the Jew who had stolen my pelisse was just about to rip
+it up and cut it into pieces. My son and I had barely time to run over
+to the Kalindjikoulosek quarter, and to save my property. We caught the
+thief in the very act, and we both recognized him as the man shown to
+us by the dervishes in the magic moon. He confessed the theft and is
+now in prison."
+
+Although none of us had the least comprehension of what she meant
+by the magic moon and the shining circle, and were all thoroughly
+mystified by her account of the divining powers of the "holy men," we
+still felt somehow satisfied from her manner that the story was not
+altogether a fabrication, and since she had at all events apparently
+succeeded in recovering her property through being somehow assisted by
+the dervishes, we determined to go the following morning and see for
+ourselves, for what had helped her might help us likewise.
+
+The monotonous cry of the Muezzins from the tops of the minarets had
+just proclaimed the hour of noon as we, descending from the heights
+of Pera to the port of Galata, with difficulty managed to elbow our
+way through the unsavory crowds of the commercial quarter of the town.
+Before we reached the docks we had been half deafened by the shouts and
+incessant ear-piercing cries and the Babel-like confusion of tongues.
+In this part of the city it is useless to expect to be guided by either
+house numbers, or names of streets. The location of any desired place
+is indicated by its proximity to some other more conspicuous building,
+such as a mosque, bath or European shop; for the rest, one has to trust
+to Allah and his prophet.
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that we finally
+discovered the British ship-chandler's store, at the rear of which
+we were to find the place of our destination. Our hotel guide was as
+ignorant of the dervishes' abode as we were ourselves; but at last a
+small Greek, in all the simplicity of primitive undress, consented for
+a modest copper backsheesh to lead us to the dancers.
+
+When we arrived we were shown into a vast and gloomy hall that looked
+like a deserted stable. It was long and narrow, the floor was thickly
+strewn with sand as in a riding school, and it was lighted only by
+small windows placed at some height from the ground. The dervishes had
+finished their morning performances, and were evidently resting from
+their exhausting labors. They looked completely prostrated, some lying
+about in corners, others sitting on their heels staring vacantly into
+space, engaged, as we were informed, in meditation on their invisible
+deity. They appeared to have lost all power of sight and hearing, for
+none of them responded to our questions until a great gaunt figure,
+wearing a tall cap that made him look at least seven feet high, emerged
+from an obscure corner. Informing us that he was their chief, the giant
+gave us to understand that the saintly brethren, being in the habit of
+receiving orders for additional ceremonies from Allah himself, must
+on no account be disturbed. But when our interpreter had explained to
+him the object of our visit, which concerned himself alone, as he was
+the sole custodian of the "divining rod," his objections vanished and
+he extended his hand for alms. Upon being gratified, he intimated that
+only two of our party could be admitted at one time into the confidence
+of the future, and led the way, followed by Miss H---- and myself.
+
+Plunging after him into what seemed to be a half subterranean passage,
+we were led to the foot of a tall ladder leading to a chamber under
+the roof. We scrambled up after our guide, and at the top we found
+ourselves in a wretched garret of moderate size, with bare walls and
+destitute of furniture. The floor was carpeted with a thick layer of
+dust, and cobwebs festooned the walls in neglected confusion. In the
+corner we saw something that I at first mistook for a bundle of old
+rags; but the heap presently moved and got on its legs, advanced to the
+middle of the room and stood before us, the most extraordinary looking
+creature that I ever beheld. Its sex was female, but whether she was a
+woman or child it was impossible to decide. She was a hideous-looking
+dwarf, with an enormous head, the shoulders of a grenadier, with
+a waist in proportion; the whole supported by two short, lean,
+spider-like legs that seemed unequal to the task of bearing the weight
+of the monstrous body. She had a grinning countenance like the face of
+a satyr, and it was ornamented with letters and signs from the Koran
+painted in bright yellow. On her forehead was a blood-red crescent;
+her head was crowned with a dusty tarbouche, or fez; her legs were
+arrayed in large Turkish trousers, and some dirty white muslin wrapped
+round her body barely sufficed to conceal its hideous deformities. This
+creature rather let herself drop than sat down in the middle of the
+floor, and as her weight descended on the rickety boards it sent up a
+cloud of dust that set us coughing and sneezing. This was the famous
+Tatmos known as the Damascus oracle!
+
+Without losing time in idle talk, the dervish produced a piece of
+chalk, and traced around the girl a circle about six feet in diameter.
+Fetching from behind the door twelve small copper lamps which he filled
+with some dark liquid from a small bottle which he drew from his bosom,
+he placed them symmetrically around the magic circle. He then broke a
+chip of wood from a panel of the half ruined door, which bore the marks
+of many a similar depredation, and, holding the chip between his thumb
+and finger he began blowing on it at regular intervals, alternating
+the blowing with mutterings of some kind of weird incantation, till
+suddenly, and without any apparent cause for its ignition, there
+appeared a spark on the chip and it blazed up like a dry match. The
+dervish then lit the twelve lamps at this self-generated flame.
+
+During this process, Tatmos, who had sat till then altogether
+unconcerned and motionless, removed her yellow slippers from her naked
+feet, and throwing them into a corner, disclosed as an additional
+beauty, a sixth toe on each deformed foot. The dervish now reached over
+into the circle and seizing the dwarf's ankles gave her a jerk, as if
+he had been lifting a bag of corn, and raised her clear off the ground,
+then, stepping back a pace, held her head downward. He shook her as
+one might a sack to pack its contents, the motion being regular and
+easy. He then swung her to and fro like a pendulum until the necessary
+momentum was acquired, when letting go one foot, and seizing the other
+with both hands, he made a powerful muscular effort and whirled her
+round in the air as if she had been an Indian club.
+
+My companion had shrunk back in alarm to the farthest corner. Round
+and round the dervish swung his living burden, she remaining perfectly
+passive. The motion increased in rapidity until the eye could hardly
+follow the body in its circuit. This continued for perhaps two or three
+minutes, until, gradually slackening the motion, he at length stopped
+it altogether, and in an instant had landed the girl on her knees
+in the middle of the lamp-lit circle. Such was the Eastern mode of
+mesmerization as practised among the dervishes.
+
+And now the dwarf seemed entirely oblivious of external objects and in
+a deep trance. Her head and jaw dropped on her chest, her eyes were
+glazed and staring, and altogether her appearance was even more hideous
+than before. The dervish then carefully closed the shutters of the only
+window, and we should have been in total obscurity, but that there was
+a hole bored in it, through which entered a bright ray of sunlight that
+shot through the darkened room and shone upon the girl. He arranged her
+drooping head so that the ray should fall upon the crown, after which
+motioning us to remain silent, he folded his arms upon his bosom, and,
+fixing his gaze upon the bright spot, became as motionless as a stone
+image. I, too, riveted my eyes on the same spot, wondering what was to
+happen next, and how all this strange ceremony was to help me to find
+Ralph.
+
+By degrees, the bright patch, as if it had drawn through the sunbeam
+a greater splendor from without and condensed it within its own
+area, shaped itself into a brilliant star, sending out rays in every
+direction as from a focus.
+
+A curious optical effect then occurred: the room, which had been
+previously partially lighted by the sunbeam, grew darker and darker as
+the star increased in radiance, until we found ourselves in an Egyptian
+gloom. The star twinkled, trembled and turned, at first with a slow
+gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its circumference
+at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disk, and we no longer
+saw the dwarf, who seemed absorbed into its light. Having gradually
+attained an extremely rapid velocity, as the girl had done when whirled
+by the dervish, the motion began to decrease and finally merged into
+a feeble vibration, like the shimmer of moonbeams on rippling water.
+Then it flickered for a moment longer, emitted a few last flashes, and
+assuming the density and iridescence of an immense opal, it remained
+motionless. The disk now radiated a moon-like luster, soft and silvery,
+but instead of illuminating the garret, it seemed only to intensify
+the darkness. The edge of the circle was not penumbrous, but on the
+contrary sharply defined like that of a silver shield.
+
+All being now ready, the dervish without uttering a word, or removing
+his gaze from the disk, stretched out a hand, and taking hold of mine,
+he drew me to his side and pointed to the luminous shield. Looking at
+the place indicated, we saw large patches appear like those on the
+moon. These gradually formed themselves into figures that began moving
+about in high relief in their natural colors. They neither appeared
+like a photograph nor an engraving; still less like the reflection of
+images on a mirror, but as if the disk were a cameo, and they were
+raised above its surface and then endowed with life and motion. To my
+astonishment and my friend's consternation, we recognized the bridge
+leading from Galata to Stamboul spanning the Golden Horn from the new
+to the old city. There were the people hurrying to and fro, steamers
+and gay caiques gliding on the blue Bosphorus, the many colored
+buildings, villas and palaces reflected in the water; and the whole
+picture illuminated by the noon-day sun. It passed like a panorama,
+but so vivid was the impression that we could not tell whether it or
+ourselves were in motion. All was bustle and life, but not a sound
+broke the oppressive stillness. It was noiseless as a dream. It was
+a phantom picture. Street after street and quarter after quarter
+succeeded one another; there was the bazaar, with its narrow, roofed
+passages, the small shops on either side, the coffee houses with
+gravely smoking Turks; and as either they glided past us or we past
+them, one of the smokers upset the narghile and coffee of another,
+and a volley of soundless invectives caused us great amusement. So
+we traveled with the picture until we came to a large building that I
+recognized as the palace of the Minister of Finance. In a ditch behind
+the house, and close to a mosque, lying in a pool of mud with his
+silken coat all bedraggled, lay my poor Ralph! Panting and crouching
+down as if exhausted, he seemed to be in a dying condition; and near
+him were gathered some sorry-looking curs who lay blinking in the sun
+and snapping at the flies!
+
+I had seen all that I desired, although I had not breathed a word about
+the dog to the dervish, and had come more out of curiosity than with
+the idea of any success. I was impatient to leave at once and recover
+Ralph, but as my companion besought me to remain a little while longer,
+I reluctantly consented. The scene faded away and Miss H---- placed
+herself in turn by the side of the dervish.
+
+"I will think of _him_," she whispered in my ear with the eager tone
+that young ladies generally assume when talking of the worshipped _him_.
+
+There is a long stretch of sand and a blue sea with white waves dancing
+in the sun, and a great steamer is ploughing her way along past a
+desolate shore, leaving a milky track behind her. The deck is full
+of life, the men are busy forward, the cook with white cap and apron
+is coming out of the galley, uniformed officers are moving about,
+passengers fill the quarter-deck, lounging, flirting or reading, and a
+young man we both recognize comes forward and leans over the taffrail.
+It is--_him_.
+
+Miss H---- gives a little gasp, blushes and smiles, and concentrates her
+thoughts again. The picture of the steamer vanishes; the magic moon
+remains for a few moments blank. But new spots appear on its luminous
+face, we see a library slowly emerging from its depths--a library with
+green carpet and hangings, and book-shelves round the sides of the
+room. Seated in an arm-chair at a table under a hanging lamp, is an old
+gentleman writing. His gray hair is brushed back from his forehead,
+his face is smooth-shaven and his countenance has an expression of
+benignity.
+
+The dervish made an hasty motion to enjoin silence; the light on the
+disk quivers, but resumes its steady brilliancy, and again its surface
+is imageless for a second.
+
+We are back in Constantinople now and out of the pearly depths of the
+shield forms our own apartment in the hotel. There are our papers and
+books on the bureau, my friend's traveling hat in a corner, her ribbons
+hanging on the glass, and lying on the bed the very dress she had
+changed when starting out on our expedition. No detail was lacking to
+make the identification complete; and as if to prove that we were not
+seeing something conjured up in our own imagination, there lay upon
+the dressing-table two unopened letters, the handwriting on which was
+clearly recognized by my friend. They were from a very dear relative
+of hers, from whom she had expected to hear when in Athens, but had
+been disappointed. The scene faded away and we now saw her brother's
+room with himself lying upon the lounge, and a servant bathing his
+head, whence, to our horror, blood was trickling. We had left the boy
+in perfect health but an hour before; and upon seeing this picture my
+companion uttered a cry of alarm, and seizing me by the hand dragged
+me to the door. We rejoined our guide and friends in the long hall and
+hurried back to the hotel.
+
+Young H---- had fallen downstairs and cut his forehead rather badly;
+in our room, on the dressing-table were the two letters which had
+arrived in our absence. They had been forwarded from Athens. Ordering
+a carriage, I at once drove to the Ministry of Finance, and alighting
+with the guide, hurriedly made for the ditch I had seen for the first
+time in the shining disk! In the middle of the pool, badly mangled,
+half-famished, but still alive, lay my beautiful spaniel Ralph, and
+near him were the blinking curs, unconcernedly snapping at the flies.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE POLAR LANDS
+
+(A Christmas Story)
+
+
+Just a year ago, during the Christmas holidays, a numerous society had
+gathered in the country house, or rather the old hereditary castle,
+of a wealthy landowner in Finland. Many were the remains in it of our
+forefathers' hospitable way of living; and many the medieval customs
+preserved, founded on traditions and superstitions, semi-Finnish and
+semi-Russian, the latter imported into it by its female proprietors
+from the shores of the Neva. Christmas trees were being prepared and
+implements for divination were being made ready. For, in that old
+castle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous ancestors and
+knights and ladies, old deserted turrets, with bastions and Gothic
+windows; mysterious somber alleys, and dark and endless cellars, easily
+transformed into subterranean passages and caves, ghostly prison cells,
+haunted by the restless phantoms of the heroes of local legends. In
+short, the old Manor offered every commodity for romantic horrors. But
+alas! this once they serve for nought; in the present narrative these
+dear old horrors play no such part as they otherwise might.
+
+Its chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man--let us call him
+Erkler. Yes; Dr. Erkler, professor of medicine, half-German through
+his father, a full-blown Russian on his mother's side and by education;
+and one who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.
+Nevertheless, very extraordinary things happened with him.
+
+Erkler, as it turned out was a great traveler, who by his own choice
+had accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his journeys round
+the world. More than once they had both seen death face to face from
+sunstrokes under the Tropics, from cold in the Polar Regions. All this
+notwithstanding, the doctor spoke with a never-abating enthusiasm
+about their "winterings" in Greenland and Novaya Zemla, and about the
+desert plains in Australia, where he lunched off a kangaroo and dined
+off an emu, and almost perished of thirst during the passage through a
+waterless track, which it took them forty hours to cross.
+
+"Yes," he used to remark, "I have experienced almost everything, save
+what you would describe as _supernatural_.... This, of course if we
+throw out of account a certain extraordinary event in my life--a man
+I met, of whom I will tell you just now--and its ... indeed, rather
+strange, I may add quite _inexplicable_, results."
+
+There was a loud demand that he should explain himself; and the doctor,
+forced to yield, began his narrative.
+
+"In 1878 we were compelled to winter on the north-western coast of
+Spitsbergen. We had been attempting to find our way during the short
+summer to the pole; but, as usual, the attempt had proved a failure,
+owing to the icebergs, and, after several such fruitless endeavors,
+we had to give it up. No sooner had we settled than the polar night
+descended upon us, our steamers got wedged in and frozen between the
+blocks of ice in the Gulf of Mussel, and we found ourselves cut off
+for eight long months from the rest of the living world.... I confess
+I, for one, felt it terribly at first. We became especially discouraged
+when one stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of materials
+prepared for our winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deer
+from our herd. Starvation in prospect is no incentive to good humor;
+and with the deer we had lost the best _plat de resistance_ against
+polar frosts, human organisms demanding in that climate an increase
+of heating and solid food. However, we were finally reconciled to
+our loss, and even got accustomed to the local and in reality more
+nutritious food--seals, and seal-grease. Our men from the remnants of
+our lumber built a house neatly divided into two compartments, one for
+our three professors and myself, and the other for themselves; and, a
+few wooden sheds being constructed for meteorological, astronomical
+and magnetic purposes, we even added a protecting stable for the few
+remaining deer. And then began the monotonous series of dawnless nights
+and days, hardly distinguishable one from the other, except through
+dark-gray shadows. At times, the "blues" we got into were fearful! We
+had contemplated sending two of our three steamers home in September,
+but the premature and unforeseen formation of ice walls round them had
+thwarted our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands, we had
+to economize still more with our meager provisions, fuel and light.
+Lamps were used only for scientific purposes: the rest of the time
+we had to content ourselves with God's light--the moon and the Aurora
+Borealis.... But how describe these glorious, incomparable northern
+lights! Rings, arrows, gigantic conflagrations of accurately divided
+rays of the most vivid and varied colors. The November moonlight
+nights were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow and the
+frozen rocks was most striking. These were fairy nights.
+
+"Well, one such night--it may have been one such _day_, for all I know,
+as from the end of November to about the middle of March we had no
+twilights at all, to distinguish the one from the other--we suddenly
+espied in the play of colored beams, which were then throwing a golden
+rosy hue on the snow plains, a dark moving spot.... It grew, and seemed
+to scatter as it approached nearer to us. What did this mean?... It
+looked like a herd of cattle, or a group of living men, trotting over
+the snowy wilderness.... But animals there were white like everything
+else. What then was this?... human beings?...
+
+"We could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men was approaching
+our dwelling. It turned out to be about fifty seal-hunters, guided by
+Matiliss, a well-known veteran mariner, from Norway. They had been
+caught by the icebergs, just as we had been.
+
+"'How did you know that we were here?' we asked.
+
+"'Old Johan, this very same old party, showed us the way'--they
+answered, pointing to a venerable-looking old man with snow-white locks.
+
+"In sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide far better to have
+sat at home over his fire than to have been seal-hunting in polar lands
+with younger men. And we told them so, still wondering how he came to
+learn of our presence in this kingdom of white bears. At this Matiliss
+and his companions smiled, assuring us that 'old Johan' _knew all_.
+They remarked that we must be novices in polar borderlands, since we
+were ignorant of Johan's personality and could still wonder at anything
+said of him.
+
+"'It is nigh forty-five years,' said the chief hunter, 'that I have
+been catching seals in the Polar Seas, and as far as my personal
+remembrance goes, I have always known him, and just as he is now, an
+old, white-bearded man. And so far back as in the days when I used to
+go to sea, as a small boy with my father, my dad used to tell me the
+same of old Johan, and he added that his own father and grandfather
+too, had known Johan in their days of boyhood, none of them having ever
+seen him otherwise than white as our snows. And, as our forefathers
+nicknamed him "the white-haired all-knower," thus do we, the seal
+hunters, call him, to this day.'
+
+"'Would you make us believe he is two hundred years old?'--we laughed.
+
+"Some of our sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon, plied
+him with questions.
+
+"'Grandfather! answer us, how old are you?'
+
+"'I really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as long as God has
+decreed me to. As to my years, I never counted them.'
+
+"'And how did you know, grandfather, that we were wintering in this
+place?'
+
+"'God guided me. How I learned it I do not know; save that I knew--I
+knew it.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE ENSOULED VIOLIN
+
+
+I
+
+In the year 1828, an old German, a music teacher, came to Paris with
+his pupil and settled unostentatiously in one of the quiet faubourgs
+of the metropolis. The first rejoiced in the name of Samuel Klaus; the
+second answered to the more poetical appellation of Franz Stenio. The
+younger man was a violinist, gifted, as rumor went, with extraordinary,
+almost miraculous talent. Yet as he was poor and had not hitherto
+made a name for himself in Europe, he remained for several years in
+the capital of France--the heart and pulse of capricious continental
+fashion--unknown and unappreciated. Franz was a Styrian by birth, and,
+at the time of the event to be presently described, he was a young
+man considerably under thirty. A philosopher and a dreamer by nature,
+imbued with all the mystic oddities of true genius, he reminded one of
+some of the heroes in Hoffmann's _Contes Fantastiques_. His earlier
+existence had been a very unusual, in fact, quite an eccentric one, and
+its history must be briefly told--for the better understanding of the
+present story.
+
+Born of very pious country people, in a quiet burg among the Styrian
+Alps; nursed "by the native gnomes who watched over his cradle";
+growing up in the weird atmosphere of the ghouls and vampires who play
+such a prominent part in the household of every Styrian and Slavonian
+in Southern Austria; educated later, as a student, in the shadow of
+the old Rhenish castles of Germany; Franz from his childhood had
+passed through every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called
+"supernatural." He had also studied at one time the "occult arts" with
+an enthusiastic disciple of Paracelsus and Kunrath; alchemy had few
+theoretical secrets for him; and he had dabbled in "ceremonial magic"
+and "sorcery" with some Hungarian Tziganes. Yet he loved above all else
+music, and above music--his violin.
+
+At the age of twenty-two he suddenly gave up his practical studies in
+the occult, and from that day, though as devoted as ever in thought
+to the beautiful Grecian Gods, he surrendered himself entirely to his
+art. Of his classic studies he had retained only that which related
+to the muses--Euterpe especially, at whose altar he worshipped--and
+Orpheus whose magic lyre he tried to emulate with his violin. Except
+his dreamy belief in the nymphs and the sirens, on account probably of
+the double relationship of the latter to the muses through Calliope and
+Orpheus, he was interested but little in the matters of this sublunary
+world. All his aspirations mounted, like incense, with the wave of the
+heavenly harmony that he drew from his instrument, to a higher and a
+nobler sphere. He dreamed awake, and lived a real though an enchanted
+life only during those hours when his magic bow carried him along the
+wave of sound to the Pagan Olympus, to the feet of Euterpe. A strange
+child he had ever been in his own home, where tales of magic and
+witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil; a still stranger boy he
+had become, until finally he had blossomed into manhood, without one
+single characteristic of youth. Never had a fair face attracted his
+attention; not for one moment had his thoughts turned from his solitary
+studies to a life beyond that of a mystic Bohemian. Content with his
+own company, he had thus passed the best years of his youth and manhood
+with his violin for his chief idol, and with the Gods and Goddesses of
+old Greece for his audience, in perfect ignorance of practical life.
+His whole existence had been one long day of dreams, of melody and
+sunlight, and he had never felt any other aspirations.
+
+How useless, but oh, how glorious those dreams! how vivid! and why
+should he desire any better fate? Was he not all that he wanted to
+be, transformed in a second of thought into one or another hero; from
+Orpheus, who held all nature breathless, to the urchin who piped away
+under the plane tree to the naiads of Callirrhoe's crystal fountain?
+Did not the swift-footed nymphs frolic at his beck and call to the
+sound of the magic flute of the Arcadian Shepherd--who was himself?
+Behold, the Goddess of Love and Beauty herself descending from on high,
+attracted by the sweet-voiced notes of his violin!... Yet there came
+a time when he preferred Syrinx to Aphrodite--not as the fair nymph
+pursued by Pan, but after her transformation by the merciful Gods into
+the reed out of which the frustrated God of the Shepherds had made
+his magic pipe. For also, with time, ambition grows and is rarely
+satisfied. When he tried to emulate on his violin the enchanting sounds
+that resounded in his mind, the whole of Parnassus kept silent under
+the spell, or joined in heavenly chorus; but the audience he finally
+craved was composed of more than the Gods sung by Hesiod, verily of the
+most appreciative _melomanes_ of European capitals. He felt jealous of
+the magic pipe, and would fain have had it at his command.
+
+"Oh, that I could allure a nymph into my beloved violin!"--he often
+cried, after awakening from one of his day-dreams. "Oh, that I could
+only span in spirit flight the abyss of Time! Oh, that I could find
+myself for one short day a partaker of the secret arts of the Gods,
+a God myself, in the sight and hearing of enraptured humanity; and,
+having learned the mystery of the lyre of Orpheus, or secured within my
+violin a siren, thereby benefit mortals to my own glory!"
+
+Thus, having for long years dreamed in the company of the Gods of his
+fancy, he now took to dreaming of the transitory glories of fame upon
+this earth. But at this time he was suddenly called home by his widowed
+mother from one of the German universities where he had lived for the
+last year or two. This was an event which brought his plans to an end,
+at least so far as the immediate future was concerned, for he had
+hitherto drawn upon her alone for his meager pittance, and his means
+were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place.
+
+His return had a very unexpected result. His mother, whose only love
+he was on earth, died soon after she had welcomed her Benjamin back;
+and the good wives of the burg exercised their swift tongues for many a
+month after as to the real causes of that death.
+
+Frau Stenio, before Franz's return, was a healthy, buxom, middle-aged
+body, strong and hearty. She was a pious and a God-fearing soul
+too, who had never failed in saying her prayers, nor had missed an
+early mass for years during his absence. On the first Sunday after
+her son had settled at home--a day that she had been longing for and
+had anticipated for months in joyous visions, in which she saw him
+kneeling by her side in the little church on the hill--she called him
+from the foot of the stairs. The hour had come when her pious dream was
+to be realized, and she was waiting for him, carefully wiping the dust
+from the prayer-book he had used in his boyhood. But instead of Franz,
+it was his violin that responded to her call, mixing its sonorous voice
+with the rather cracked tones of the peal of the merry Sunday bells.
+The fond mother was somewhat shocked at hearing the prayer-inspiring
+sounds drowned by the weird, fantastic notes of the "Dance of the
+Witches"; they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking. But she almost
+fainted upon hearing the definite refusal of her well-beloved son to
+go to church. He never went to church, he coolly remarked. It was loss
+of time; besides which, the loud peals of the old church organ jarred
+on his nerves. Nothing should induce him to submit to the torture of
+listening to that cracked organ. He was firm and nothing could move
+him. To her supplications and remonstrances he put an end by offering
+to play for her a "Hymn to the Sun" he had just composed.
+
+From that memorable Sunday morning, Frau Stenio lost her usual serenity
+of mind. She hastened to lay her sorrows and seek for consolation at
+the foot of the confessional; but that which she heard in response
+from the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated soul with
+dismay and almost with despair. A feeling of fear, a sense of profound
+terror, which soon became a chronic state with her, pursued her from
+that moment; her nights became disturbed and sleepless, her days passed
+in prayer and lamentations. In her maternal anxiety for the salvation
+of her beloved son's soul, and for his _post mortem_ welfare, she made
+a series of rash vows. Finding that neither the Latin petition to the
+Mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser, nor yet the
+humble supplications in German, addressed by herself to every saint
+she had reason to believe was residing in Paradise, worked the desired
+effect, she took to pilgrimages to distant shrines. During one of these
+journeys to a holy chapel situated high up in the mountains, she caught
+cold, amidst the glaciers of the Tyrol, and redescended only to take
+to a sick bed, from which she arose no more. Frau Stenio's vow had led
+her, in one sense, to the desired result. The poor woman was now given
+an opportunity of seeking out in _propria persona_ the saints she had
+believed in so well, and of pleading face to face for the recreant son,
+who refused adherence to them and to the Church, scoffed at monk and
+confessional, and held the organ in such horror.
+
+Franz sincerely lamented his mother's death. Unaware of being the
+indirect cause of it, he felt no remorse; but selling the modest
+household goods and chattels, light in purse and heart, he resolved to
+travel on foot for a year or two, before settling down to any definite
+profession.
+
+A hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe, and to try his luck
+in France, lurked at the bottom of this traveling project, but his
+Bohemian habits of life were too strong to be abruptly abandoned. He
+placed his small capital with a banker for a rainy day, and started
+on his pedestrian journey _via_ Germany and Austria. His violin paid
+for his board and lodging in the inns and farms on his way, and he
+passed his days in the green fields and in the solemn silent woods,
+face to face with Nature, dreaming all the time as usual with his eyes
+open. During the three months of his pleasant travels to and fro, he
+never descended for one moment from Parnassus; but, as an alchemist
+transmutes lead into gold, so he transformed everything on his way
+into a song of Hesiod or Anacreon. Every evening, while fiddling for
+his supper and bed, whether on a green lawn or in the hall of a rustic
+inn, his fancy changed the whole scene for him. Village swains and
+maidens became transfigured into Arcadian shepherds and nymphs. The
+sand-covered floor was now a green sward; the uncouth couples spinning
+round in a measured waltz with the wild grace of tamed bears became
+priests and priestesses of Terpsichore; the bulky, cherry-cheeked and
+blue-eyed daughters of rural Germany were the Hesperides circling
+around the trees laden with the golden apples. Nor did the melodious
+strains of the Arcadian demi-gods piping on their syrinxes, and audible
+but to his own enchanted ear, vanish with the dawn. For no sooner was
+the curtain of sleep raised from his eyes than he would sally forth
+into a new magic realm of day-dreams. On his way to some dark and
+solemn pine-forest, he played incessantly, to himself and to everything
+else. He fiddled to the green hill, and forthwith the mountain and the
+moss-covered rocks moved forward to hear him the better, as they had
+done at the sound of the Orphean lyre. He fiddled to the merry-voiced
+brook, to the hurrying river, and both slackened their speed and
+stopped their waves, and, becoming silent, seemed to listen to him in
+an entranced rapture. Even the long-legged stork who stood meditatively
+on one leg on the thatched top of the rustic mill, gravely resolving
+unto himself the problem of his too-long existence, sent out after
+him a long and strident cry, screeching, "Art thou Orpheus himself, O
+Stenio?"
+
+It was a period of full bliss, of a daily and almost hourly exaltation.
+The last words of his dying mother, whispering to him of the horrors
+of eternal condemnation, had left him unaffected, and the only vision
+her warning evoked in him was that of Pluto. By a ready association of
+ideas, he saw the lord of the dark nether kingdom greeting him as he
+had greeted the husband of Eurydice before him. Charmed with the magic
+sounds of his violin, the wheel of Ixion was at a standstill once more,
+thus affording relief to the wretched seducer of Juno, and giving the
+lie to those who claim eternity for the duration of the punishment of
+condemned sinners. He perceived Tantalus forgetting his never-ceasing
+thirst, and smacking his lips as he drank in the heaven-born melody;
+the stone of Sisyphus becoming motionless, the Furies themselves
+smiling on him, and the sovereign of the gloomy regions delighted, and
+awarding preference to his violin over the lyre of Orpheus. Taken _au
+serieux_, mythology thus seems a decided antidote to fear, in the face
+of theological threats, especially when strengthened with an insane and
+passionate love of music; with Franz, Euterpe proved always victorious
+in every contest, aye, even with Hell itself!
+
+But there is an end to everything, and very soon Franz had to give up
+uninterrupted dreaming. He had reached the university town where dwelt
+his old violin teacher, Samuel Klaus. When this antiquated musician
+found that his beloved and favorite pupil, Franz, had been left poor
+in purse and still poorer in earthly affections, he felt his strong
+attachment to the boy awaken with tenfold force. He took Franz to his
+heart, and forthwith adopted him as his son.
+
+The old teacher reminded people of one of those grotesque figures which
+look as if they had just stepped out of some medieval panel. And yet
+Klaus, with his fantastic _allures_ of a night-goblin, had the most
+loving heart, as tender as that of a woman, and the self-sacrificing
+nature of an old Christian martyr. When Franz had briefly narrated to
+him the history of his last few years, the professor took him by the
+hand, and leading him into his study simply said:
+
+"Stop with me, and put an end to your Bohemian life. Make yourself
+famous. I am old and childless and will be your father. Let us live
+together and forget all save fame."
+
+And forthwith he offered to proceed with Franz to Paris, _via_ several
+large German cities, where they would stop to give concerts.
+
+In a few days Klaus succeeded in making Franz forget his vagrant life
+and its artistic independence, and reawakened in his pupil his now
+dormant ambition and desire for worldly fame. Hitherto, since his
+mother's death, he had been content to received applause only from the
+Gods and Goddesses who inhabited his vivid fancy; now he began to crave
+once more for the admiration of mortals. Under the clever and careful
+training of old Klaus his remarkable talent gained in strength and
+powerful charm with every day, and his reputation grew and expanded
+with every city and town wherein he made himself heard. His ambition
+was being rapidly realized; the presiding genii of various musical
+centers to whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed him
+_the one_ violinist of the day, and the public declared loudly that he
+stood unrivaled by any one whom they had ever heard. These laudations
+very soon made both master and pupil completely lose their heads.
+
+But Paris was less ready with such appreciation. Paris makes
+reputations for itself, and will take none on faith. They had been
+living in it for almost three years, and were still climbing with
+difficulty the artist's Calvary, when an event occurred which put
+an end even to their most modest expectations. The first arrival of
+Niccolo Paganini was suddenly heralded, and threw Lutetia into a
+convulsion of expectation. The unparalleled artist arrived, and--all
+Paris fell at once at his feet.
+
+
+II
+
+Now it is a well known fact that a superstition born in the dark days
+of medieval superstition, and surviving almost to the middle of the
+present century, attributed all such abnormal, out-of-the-way talent as
+that of Paganini to "supernatural" agency. Every great and marvelous
+artist had been accused in his day of dealings with the devil. A few
+instances will suffice to refresh the reader's memory.
+
+Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the seventeenth century,
+was denounced as one who got his best inspirations from the Evil One,
+with whom he was, it was said, in regular league. This accusation
+was, of course, due to the almost magical impression he produced upon
+his audiences. His inspired performance on the violin secured for him
+in his native country the title of "Master of Nations." The _Sonate
+du Diable_, also called "Tartini's Dream"--as everyone who has heard
+it will be ready to testify--is the most weird melody ever heard or
+invented: hence, the marvelous composition has become the source of
+endless legends. Nor were they entirely baseless, since it was he,
+himself, who was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed to
+having written it on awakening from a dream, in which he had heard his
+sonata performed by Satan, for his benefit, and in consequence of a
+bargain made with his infernal majesty.
+
+Several famous singers, even, whose exceptional voices struck the
+hearers with superstitious admiration, have not escaped a like
+accusation. Pasta's splendid voice was attributed in her day to the
+fact that, three months before her birth, the diva's mother was carried
+during a trance to heaven, and there treated to a vocal concert of
+seraphs. Malibran was indebted for her voice to St. Cecelia, while
+others said she owed it to a demon who watched over her cradle and sung
+the baby to sleep. Finally, Paganini--the unrivaled performer, the mean
+Italian, who like Dryden's Jubal striking on the "chorded shell" forced
+the throngs that followed him to worship the divine sounds produced,
+and made people say that "less than a God could not dwell within the
+hollow of his violin"--Paganini left a legend too.
+
+The almost supernatural art of the greatest violin player that the
+world has ever known was often speculated upon, never understood.
+The effect produced by him on his audience was literally marvelous,
+overpowering. The great Rossini is said to have wept like a sentimental
+German maiden on hearing him play for the first time. The Princess
+Elisa of Lucca, a sister of the great Napoleon, in whose service
+Paganini was, as director of her private orchestra, for a long time
+was unable to hear him play without fainting. In women he produced
+nervous fits and hysterics at his will; stout-hearted men he drove to
+frenzy. He changed cowards into heroes and made the bravest soldiers
+feel like so many nervous school-girls. Is it to be wondered at, then,
+that hundreds of weird tales circulated for long years about and
+around the mysterious Genoese, that modern Orpheus of Europe? One of
+these was especially ghastly. It was rumored, and was believed by more
+people than would probably like to confess it, that the strings of his
+violin were made of _human intestines, according to all the rules and
+requirements of the Black Art_.
+
+Exaggerated as this idea may seem to some, it has nothing impossible in
+it; and it is more than probable that it was this legend that led to
+the extraordinary events which we are about to narrate. Human organs
+are often used by the Eastern Black Magician, so-called, and it is an
+averred fact that some Bengali Tantrikas (reciters of _tantras_, or
+"invocations to the demon," as a reverend writer has described them)
+use human corpses, and certain internal and external organs pertaining
+to them, as powerful magical agents for bad purposes.
+
+However this may be, now that the magnetic and mesmeric potencies
+of hypnotism are recognized as facts by most physicians, it may be
+suggested with less danger than heretofore that the extraordinary
+effects of Paganini's violin-playing were not, perhaps, entirely due
+to his talent and genius. The wonder and awe he so easily excited were
+as much caused by his external appearance, "which had something weird
+and demoniacal in it," according to certain of his biographers, as by
+the inexpressible charm of his execution and his remarkable mechanical
+skill. The latter is demonstrated by his perfect imitation of the
+flageolet, and his performance of long and magnificent melodies on the
+G string alone. In this performance, which many an artist has tried to
+copy without success, he remains unrivaled to this day.
+
+It is owing to this remarkable appearance of his--termed by his
+friends eccentric, and by his too nervous victims, diabolical--that
+he experienced great difficulties in refuting certain ugly rumors.
+These were credited far more easily in his day than they would be
+now. It was whispered throughout Italy, and even in his own native
+town, that Paganini had murdered his wife, and, later on, a mistress,
+both of whom he had loved passionately, and both of whom he had not
+hesitated to sacrifice to his fiendish ambition. He had made himself
+proficient in magic arts, it was asserted, and had succeeded thereby
+in imprisoning the souls of his two victims in his violin--his famous
+Cremona.
+
+It is maintained by the immediate friends of Ernst T. W. Hoffmann, the
+celebrated author of _Die Elixire des Teufels_, _Meister Martin_, and
+other charming and mystical tales, that Councillor Crespel, in the
+_Violin of Cremona_, was taken from the legend about Paganini. It is,
+as all who have read it know, the history of a celebrated violin, into
+which the voice and the soul of a famous diva, a woman whom Crespel had
+loved and killed, had passed, and to which was added the voice of his
+beloved daughter, Antonia.
+
+Nor was this superstition utterly ungrounded, nor was Hoffmann to
+be blamed for adopting it, after he had heard Paganini's playing.
+The extraordinary facility with which the artist drew out of his
+instrument, not only the most unearthly sounds, but positively human
+voices, justified the suspicion. Such effects might well have startled
+an audience and thrown terror into many a nervous heart. Add to this
+the impenetrable mystery connected with a certain period of Paganini's
+youth, and the most wild tales about him must be found in a measure
+justifiable, and even excusable; especially among a nation whose
+ancestors knew the Borgias and the Medicis of Black Art fame.
+
+
+III
+
+In those pre-telegraphic days, newspapers were limited, and the wings
+of fame had a heavier flight than they have now. Franz had hardly heard
+of Paganini; and when he did, he swore he would rival, if not eclipse,
+the Genoese magician. Yes, he would either become the most famous of
+all living violinists, or he would break his instrument and put an end
+to his life at the same time.
+
+Old Klaus rejoiced at such a determination. He rubbed his hands in
+glee, and jumping about on his lame leg like a crippled satyr, he
+flattered and incensed his pupil, believing himself all the while to be
+performing a sacred duty to the holy and majestic cause of art.
+
+Upon first setting foot in Paris, three years before, Franz had
+all but failed. Musical critics pronounced him a rising star, but
+had all agreed that he required a few more years' practice, before
+he could hope to carry his audiences by storm. Therefore, after a
+desperate study of over two years and uninterrupted preparations, the
+Styrian artist had finally made himself ready for his first serious
+appearance in the great Opera House where a public concert before
+the most exacting critics of the old world was to be held; at this
+critical moment Paganini's arrival in the European metropolis placed
+an obstacle in the way of the realization of his hopes, and the old
+German professor wisely postponed his pupil's _debut_. At first he had
+simply smiled at the wild enthusiasm, the laudatory hymns sung about
+the Genoese violinist, and the almost superstitious awe with which his
+name was pronounced. But very soon Paganini's name became a burning
+iron in the hearts of both the artists, and a threatening phantom in
+the mind of Klaus. A few days more, and they shuddered at the very
+mention of their great rival, whose success became with every night
+more unprecedented.
+
+The first series of concerts was over, but neither Klaus nor Franz
+had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him and of judging for
+themselves. So great and so beyond their means was the charge for
+admission, and so small the hope of getting a free pass from a brother
+artist justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary transactions,
+that they had to wait for a chance, as did so many others. But the day
+came when neither master nor pupil could control their impatience any
+longer; so they pawned their watches, and with the proceeds bought two
+modest seats.
+
+Who can describe the enthusiasm, the triumphs, of this famous, and at
+the same time fatal night! The audience was frantic; men wept and women
+screamed and fainted; while both Klaus and Stenio sat looking paler
+than two ghosts. At the first touch of Paganini's magic bow, both Franz
+and Samuel felt as if the icy hand of death had touched them. Carried
+away by an irresistible enthusiasm, which turned into a violent,
+unearthly mental torture, they dared neither look into each other's
+faces, nor exchange one word during the whole performance.
+
+At midnight, while the chosen delegates of the Musical Societies
+and the Conservatory of Paris unhitched the horses, and dragged the
+carriage of the grand artist home in triumph, the two Germans returned
+to their modest lodging, and it was a pitiful sight to see them.
+Mournful and desperate, they placed themselves in their usual seats at
+the fire-corner, and neither for a while opened his mouth.
+
+"Samuel!" at last exclaimed Franz, pale as death itself. "Samuel--it
+remains for us now but to die!... Do you hear me?... We are worthless!
+We were two madmen to have ever hoped that any one in this world would
+ever rival ... him."
+
+The name of Paganini stuck in his throat, as in utter despair he fell
+into his arm chair.
+
+The old professor's wrinkles suddenly became purple. His little
+greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescently as, bending toward his pupil, he
+whispered to him in hoarse and broken tones:
+
+"_Nein, Nein!_ Thou art wrong, my Franz! I have taught thee, and thou
+hast learned all of the great art that a simple mortal, and a Christian
+by baptism, can learn from another simple mortal. Am I to blame because
+these accursed Italians, in order to reign unequaled in the domain of
+art, have recourse to Satan and the diabolical effects of Black Magic?"
+
+Franz turned his eyes upon his old master. There was a sinister light
+burning in those glittering orbs; a light telling plainly that, to
+secure such a power, he, too, would not scruple to sell himself, body
+and soul, to the Evil One.
+
+But he said not a word, and, turning his eyes from his old master's
+face, gazed dreamily at the dying embers.
+
+The same long-forgotten incoherent dreams, which, after seeming such
+realities to him in his younger days, had been given up entirely, and
+had gradually faded from his mind, now crowded back into it with the
+same force and vividness as of old. The grimacing shades of Ixion,
+Sisyphus and Tantalus resurrected and stood before him, saying:
+
+"What matters hell--in which thou believest not. And even if hell there
+be, it is the hell described by the old Greeks, not that of the modern
+bigots--a locality full of conscious shadows, to whom thou canst be a
+second Orpheus."
+
+Franz felt that he was going mad, and, turning instinctively, he
+looked his old master once more right in the face. Then his bloodshot
+eye evaded the gaze of Klaus.
+
+Whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind of his pupil,
+or whether he wanted to draw him out, to make him speak, and thus to
+divert his thoughts, must remain as hypothetical to the reader as
+it is to the writer. Whatever may have been in his mind, the German
+enthusiast went on, speaking with a feigned calmness:
+
+"Franz, my dear boy, I tell you that the art of the accursed Italian
+is not natural; that it is due neither to study nor to genius. It
+never was acquired in the usual, natural way. You need not stare at
+me in that wild manner, for what I say is in the mouth of millions of
+people. Listen to what I now tell you, and try to understand. You have
+heard the strange tale whispered about the famous Tartini? He died one
+fine Sabbath night strangled by his familiar demon, who had taught
+him how to endow his violin with a human voice, by shutting up in it,
+by means of incantations, the soul of a young virgin. Paganini did
+more. In order to endow his instrument with the faculty of emitting
+human sounds, such as sobs, despairing cries, supplications, moans
+of love and fury--in short, the most heart-rending notes of the human
+voice--Paganini became the murderer not only of his wife and his
+mistress, but also of a friend, who was more tenderly attached to
+him than any other being on this earth. He then made the four chords
+of his magic violin out of the intestines of his last victim. This
+is the secret of his enchanting talent of that overpowering melody,
+that combination of sounds, which you will never be able to master
+unless...."
+
+The old man could not finish his sentence. He staggered back before the
+fiendish look of his pupil, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an expression which
+reminded Klaus of those of a hyena. His pallor was cadaverous. For some
+time he could not speak, but only gasp for breath. At last he slowly
+muttered:
+
+"Are you in earnest?"
+
+"I am, as I hope to help you."
+
+"And.... And do you really believe that had I only the means of
+obtaining human intestines for strings, I could rival Paganini?" asked
+Franz, after a moment's pause, and casting down his eyes.
+
+The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange look of
+determination upon it, softly answered:
+
+"Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our purpose; they must
+have belonged to some one who had loved us well, with an unselfish,
+holy love. Tartini endowed his violin with the life of a virgin; but
+that virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The fiendish artist
+had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he managed to catch her last
+breath as she expired, pronouncing his beloved name, and he then
+transferred this breath to his violin. As to Paganini, I have just told
+you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim, though, that he
+murdered him to get possession of his intestines.
+
+"Oh, for the power of the human voice!" Samuel went on, after a brief
+pause. "What can equal the eloquence, the magic spell of the human
+voice? Do you think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this
+great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one right into the
+clutches of him ... who must remain unnamed at night?" he added, with
+a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth.
+
+Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to behold, he left his
+place, took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging, and,
+with one powerful grasp of the chords, he tore them out and flung them
+into the fire.
+
+Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were hissing upon the
+coals, where, among the blazing logs, they wriggled and curled like so
+many living snakes.
+
+"By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of Circe!" he exclaimed,
+with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals; "by the Furies of
+Hell and Pluto himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O Samuel, my
+master, never to touch a violin again until I can string it with four
+human chords. May I be accursed for ever and ever if I do!" He fell
+senseless on the floor, with a deep sob, that ended like a funeral
+wail; old Samuel lifted him up as he would have lifted a child, and
+carried him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a physician.
+
+
+IV
+
+For several days after this painful scene Franz was very ill, ill
+almost beyond recovery. The physician declared him to be suffering
+from brain fever and said that the worst was to be feared. For nine
+long days the patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was nursing
+him night and day with the solicitude of the tenderest mother, was
+horrified at the work of his own hands. For the first time since their
+acquaintance began, the old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his
+pupil, was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird,
+superstitious, cold, and, at the same time, passionate nature; and--he
+trembled at what he discovered. For he saw that which he had failed
+to perceive before--Franz as he was in reality, and not as he seemed
+to superficial observers. Music was the life of the young man, and
+adulation was the air he breathed, without which that life became a
+burden; from the chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and
+being, but the applause of men and even of Gods was necessary to its
+support. He saw unveiled before his eyes a genuine, artistic, _earthly_
+soul, with its divine counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses,
+all fancy and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening to
+the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy Klaus felt as if
+he were for the first time in his long life exploring a marvelous
+and untraveled region, a human nature not of this world but of some
+incomplete planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than once he
+asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his "boy" to
+let him die before he returned to consciousness.
+
+But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an idea.
+Franz had bewitched his truly artistic nature, and now old Klaus felt
+as though their two lives were inseparably linked together. That he
+could thus feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to save
+Franz, even at the expense of his own old and, as he thought, useless
+life.
+
+The seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis. For
+twenty-four hours the patient never closed his eyes, nor remained for a
+moment silent; he raved continuously during the whole time. His visions
+were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic, ghastly
+figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small dark
+room, in regular and uninterrupted procession, and he greeted each by
+name as he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself as
+Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands made of human intestines.
+At the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black waters of the river Styx
+were running.... They had deserted Arcadia, and were now endeavoring
+to encircle within a seven-fold embrace the rock upon which he was
+suffering....
+
+"Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean rock, old man?" he roared
+into his adopted father's ear.... "Listen then, ... its name is ...
+called ... Samuel Klaus...."
+
+"Yes, yes!..." the German murmured disconsolately. "It is I who killed
+him, while seeking to console. The news of Paganini's magic arts struck
+his fancy too vividly.... Oh, my poor, poor boy!"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" The patient broke into a loud and discordant laugh.
+"Aye, poor old man, sayest thou?... So, so, thou art of poor stuff,
+anyhow, and wouldst look well only when stretched upon a fine Cremona
+violin!..."
+
+Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over the poor maniac,
+and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress as tender and as gentle as that
+of a doting mother, he left the sick-room for a few instants, to seek
+relief in his own garret. When he returned, the ravings were following
+another channel. Franz was singing, trying to imitate the sounds of a
+violin.
+
+Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the sick man became
+perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of fire clutching at his violin.
+Their skeleton hands, from each finger of which grew a flaming claw,
+beckoned to old Samuel.... They approached and surrounded the old
+master, and were preparing to rip him open ... him "the only man on
+this earth who loves me with an unselfish, holy love, and ... whose
+intestines can be of any good at all!" he went on whispering, with
+glaring eyes and demon laugh....
+
+By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared, and by the end
+of the ninth day Stenio had left his bed, having no recollection of his
+illness, and no suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his inner
+thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible idea as
+the sacrifice of his old master to his ambition had ever entered his
+mind? Hardly. The only immediate result of his fatal illness was, that
+as, by reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no issue,
+another passion awoke, which might avail to feed his ambition and his
+insatiable fancy. He plunged headlong into the study of the Occult
+Arts, of Alchemy and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young
+dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his,
+as he thought, for ever lost violin....
+
+Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation about Paganini
+was never resumed between the master and the pupil. But a profound
+melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a
+word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual
+place. It was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them.
+
+The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic, even avoiding the
+mention of music. Once, as his old professor, after long hesitation,
+took out his own violin from its dust-covered case and prepared to
+play, Franz gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the first
+notes of the bow, however, he glared like a madman, and rushing out
+of the house, remained for hours, wandering in the streets. Then old
+Samuel in his turn threw his instrument down, and locked himself up in
+his room till the following morning.
+
+One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and gloomy, old
+Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat, and after hopping about the room
+in a magpie fashion, approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon
+the young man's brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice:
+
+"Is it not time to put an end to all this?"...
+
+Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz echoed, as in a
+dream:
+
+"Yes, it is time to put an end to this."
+
+Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.
+
+On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was astonished not
+to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him. But he had
+greatly altered during the last few months, and he at first paid no
+attention to his absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into
+the adjoining room, a little parlor where they had their meals, and
+which separated their two bedrooms. The fire had not been lighted since
+the embers had died out on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere
+visible of the professor's busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties.
+Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz took his usual place
+at the corner of the now cold fire-place, and fell into an aimless
+reverie. As he stretched himself in his old arm-chair, raising both
+his hands to clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his,
+his hand came into contact with something on a shelf at his back; he
+knocked against a case, and brought it violently on the ground.
+
+It was old Klaus' violin-case that came down to the floor with such
+a sudden crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it,
+rolling to the feet of Franz. And then the chords, striking against
+the brass fender emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the
+sigh of an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole room, and
+reverberated in the head and the very heart of the young man. The
+effect of that broken violin-string was magical.
+
+"Samuel!" cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from their sockets,
+and an unknown terror suddenly taking possession of his whole being.
+"Samuel! what has happened?... My good, my dear old master!" he called
+out, hastening to the professor's little room, and throwing the door
+violently open. No one answered, all was silent within.
+
+He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own voice, so changed
+and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment. No reply came in response
+to his call. Naught followed but a dead silence ... that stillness
+which, in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the presence
+of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a tomb, such silence
+acquires a mysterious power, which strikes the sensitive soul with a
+nameless terror.... The little room was dark, and Franz hastened to
+open the shutters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless.... At the sight
+of the corpse of him who had loved him so well, and had been to him
+more than a father, Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling,
+a terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist got the
+better of the despair of the man, and smothered the feelings of the
+latter in a few seconds.
+
+A note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table near
+the corpse. With trembling hand, the violinist tore open the envelope,
+and read the following:
+
+  MY BELOVED SON, FRANZ,
+
+  When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice that
+  your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for
+  your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an inanimate lump
+  of clay. Of your old teacher there now remains but a clod of cold
+  organic matter. I need not prompt you as to what you have to do
+  with it. Fear not stupid prejudices. It is for your future fame
+  that I have made an offering of my body, and you would be guilty
+  of the blackest ingratitude were you now to render useless this
+  sacrifice. When you shall have replaced the chords upon your
+  violin, and these chords a portion of my own self, under your
+  touch it will acquire the power of that accursed sorcerer, all the
+  magic voices of Paganini's instrument. You will find therein my
+  voice, my sighs and groans, my song of welcome, the prayerful sobs
+  of my infinite and sorrowful sympathy, my love for you. And now,
+  my Franz, fear nobody! Take your instrument with you, and dog the
+  steps of him who filled our lives with bitterness and despair!...
+  Appear in every arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a
+  rival, and bravely throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face.
+  O Franz! then only wilt thou hear with what a magic power the
+  full notes of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin.
+  Perchance, with a last caressing touch of its chords, thou wilt
+  remember that they once formed a portion of thine old teacher, who
+  now embraces and blesses thee for the last time.
+
+        SAMUEL
+
+Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but they dried up
+instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate hope and pride, the two
+orbs of the future magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the
+dead man, shone like the eyes of a demon.
+
+Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on that day, after
+the legal inquiry was over. As another note, written with the view
+of satisfying the authorities, had been prudently provided by the
+loving care of the old teacher, the verdict was, "Suicide from causes
+unknown;" after this the coroner and the police retired, leaving the
+bereaved heir alone in the death-room, with the remains of that which
+had once been a living man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the violin had been
+dusted, and four new, stout strings had been stretched upon it. Franz
+dared not look at them. He tried to play, but the bow trembled in his
+hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice-brigand. He then determined
+not to try again, until the portentous night should arrive, when he
+should have a chance of rivaling, nay, of surpassing, Paganini.
+
+The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and was giving a series
+of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium.
+
+
+V
+
+One night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting
+in the dining-room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting
+card, with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a
+young man with wild and staring eyes.
+
+Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons could bear, but
+receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini
+slightly bowed, and then dryly said:
+
+"Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your service."
+
+On the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance
+of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing the strange
+notice:
+
+  On the night of ... at the Grand Theater of ... and for the
+  first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a German
+  violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the
+  world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel--upon their
+  violins. He purposes to compete with the great "virtuoso" in the
+  execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous
+  Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in
+  competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated "Fantaisie
+  Caprice" of the latter, known as "The Witches."
+
+The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, amid his greatest
+triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled the
+usual price of admission, but still the theater could not hold the
+crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and the "duel" was in
+everyone's mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed
+the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and
+down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen
+on his bed from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a
+death-like and dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke,
+but finding it too early to rise he fell to sleep again. And then he
+had a vivid dream--so vivid indeed, so life-like, that from its terrible
+realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.
+
+He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its case,
+the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those
+terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In
+accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first
+trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings,
+for he had since always practised on another instrument. But now in
+his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in
+it was attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of
+detaching his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case
+slowly rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two
+small, phosphorescent green eyes--eyes but too familiar to him--fixing
+themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill
+voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs--the voice and orbs of
+Samuel Klaus himself--resounded in Stenio's horrified ear, and he heard
+it say:
+
+"Franz, my beloved boy.... Franz, I cannot, no, _I cannot_ separate
+myself from ... _them_!"
+
+And "they" twanged piteously inside the case.
+
+Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually
+freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head....
+
+"It's but a dream, an empty dream!" he attempted to formulate in his
+mind.
+
+"I have tried my best, Franzchen.... I have tried my best to sever
+myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces
+..." pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. "Wilt thou help me to do
+so?..."
+
+Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the
+case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior
+power, like some living wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper
+and more jerky with every new pull.
+
+It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those sounds. He had
+often remarked them before--indeed, ever since he had used his master's
+viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every occasion a
+feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their
+cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a
+hallucination.
+
+But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact, whether in dream
+or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the hallucination--if
+hallucination it were--was far more real and vivid than any reality.
+He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens in
+nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a finger.... He felt
+hopelessly paralyzed.
+
+The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment, and
+at last something inside the case snapped violently. The vision of his
+Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes,
+throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable terror.
+
+He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held
+him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the invisible
+Presence repeated:
+
+"Do, oh, do ... help me to cut myself off----"
+
+Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger
+defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.
+
+"Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!" he cried, in hoarse
+and trembling tones.
+
+He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while firmly pressing
+his left hand on it, he seized with the right a piece of rosin from
+the table and he drew on the leathered-covered top the sign of the
+six-pointed star--the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the
+rebellious djins inside their prisons.
+
+A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her dead little ones,
+came out of the violin-case:
+
+"Thou art ungrateful ... very ungrateful, my Franz!" sobbed the
+blubbering "spirit-voice." "But I forgive ... for I still love thee
+well. Yet thou canst not shut me in ... boy. Behold!"
+
+[Illustration: "HE VIOLENTLY SHUT DOWN THE SELF-RAISING LID AND DREW ON
+THE LEATHER-COVERED TOP THE SIGN OF THE SIX-POINTED STAR, THE SEAL OF
+KING SOLOMON."]
+
+And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered case and table,
+and rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape. Then it
+began growing, and as it grew, Franz felt himself gradually enfolded in
+cold and damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave a terrible
+cry and--awoke; but, strangely enough, not on his bed, but near the
+table, just as he had dreamed, pressing the violin-case desperately
+with both his hands.
+
+"It was but a dream, ... after all," he muttered, still terrified, but
+relieved of the load on his heaving breast.
+
+With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and unlocked the case to
+inspect the violin. He found it covered with dust, but otherwise sound
+and in order, and he suddenly felt himself as cool and determined as
+ever. Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the bow,
+tightened the strings and tuned them. He even went so far as to try
+upon it the first notes of the "Witches"; first cautiously and timidly,
+then using his bow boldly and with full force.
+
+The sound of that loud, solitary note--defiant as the war trumpet of a
+conqueror, sweet and majestic as the touch of a seraph on his golden
+harp in the fancy of the faithful--thrilled through the very soul of
+Franz. It revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected potency in his bow,
+which ran on in strains that filled the room with the richest swell
+of melody, unheard by the artist until that night. Commencing in
+uninterrupted _legato_ tones, his bow sang to him of sun-bright hope
+and beauty, of moonlit nights, when the soft and balmy stillness
+endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and inanimate with
+a voice and a song of love. For a few brief moments it was a torrent of
+melody, the harmony of which, "tuned to soft woe," was calculated to
+make mountains weep, had there been any in the room, and to soothe
+
+    ... even th' inexorable powers of hell,
+
+the presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest hotel room.
+Suddenly, the solemn _legato_ chant, contrary to all laws of harmony,
+quivered, became _arpeggios_, and ended in shrill _staccatos_, like the
+notes of a hyena laugh. The same creeping sensation of terror, as he
+had before felt, came over him, and Franz threw the bow away. He had
+recognized the familiar laugh, and would have no more of it. Dressing,
+he locked the bedeviled violin securely in its case, and, taking it
+with him to the dining-room, determined to await quietly the hour of
+trial.
+
+
+VI
+
+The terrible hour of the struggle had come, and Stenio was at his
+post--calm, resolute, almost smiling.
+
+The theater was crowded to suffocation, and there was not even standing
+room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favoritism. The singular
+challenge had reached every quarter to which the post could carry it,
+and gold flowed freely into Paganini's unfathomable pockets, to an
+extent almost satisfying even to his insatiate and venal soul.
+
+It was arranged that Paganini should begin. When he appeared upon
+the stage, the thick walls of the theater shook to their foundations
+with the applause that greeted him. He began and ended his famous
+composition "The Witches" amid a storm of cheers. The shouts of public
+enthusiasm lasted so long that Franz began to think his turn would
+never come. When, at last, Paganini, amid the roaring applause of a
+frantic public, was allowed to retire behind the scenes, his eye fell
+upon Stenio, who was tuning his violin, and he felt amazed at the
+serene calmness, the air of assurance, of the unknown German artist.
+
+When Franz approached the footlights, he was received with icy
+coldness. But for all that, he did not feel in the least disconcerted.
+He looked very pale, but his thin white lips wore a scornful smile as
+response to this dumb unwelcome. He was sure of his triumph.
+
+At the first notes of the prelude of "The Witches" a thrill of
+astonishment passed over the audience. It was Paganini's touch, and--it
+was something more. Some--and they were the majority--thought that never,
+in his best moments of inspiration, had the Italian artist himself,
+in executing that diabolical composition of his, exhibited such an
+extraordinary diabolical power. Under the pressure of the long muscular
+fingers of Franz, the chords shivered like the palpitating intestines
+of a disemboweled victim under the vivisector's knife. They moaned
+melodiously, like a dying child. The large blue eye of the artist,
+fixed with a satanic expression upon the sounding-board, seemed to
+summon forth Orpheus himself from the infernal regions, rather than the
+musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of the violin.
+Sounds seemed to transform themselves into objective shapes, thickly
+and precipitately gathering as at the evocation of a mighty magician,
+and to be whirling around him, like a host of fantastic, infernal
+figures, dancing the witches' "goat dance." In the empty depths of
+the shadowy background of the stage, behind the artist, a nameless
+phantasmogoria, produced by the concussion of unearthly vibrations,
+seemed to form pictures of shameless orgies, of the voluptuous hymens
+of a real witches' Sabbat.... A collective hallucination took hold
+of the public. Panting for breath, ghastly, and trickling with the
+icy perspiration of an inexpressible horror, they sat spell-bound,
+and unable to break the spell of the music by the slightest motion.
+They experienced all the illicit enervating delights of the paradise
+of Mahommed, that come into the disordered fancy of an opium-eating
+Mussulman, and felt at the same time the abject terror, the agony of
+one who struggles against an attack of _delirium tremens_.... Many
+ladies shrieked aloud, others fainted, and strong men gnashed their
+teeth in a state of utter helplessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then came the _finale_. Thundering uninterrupted applause delayed its
+beginning, expanding the momentary pause to a duration of almost a
+quarter of an hour. The bravos were furious, almost hysterical. At
+last, when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile was as
+sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to attack the famous
+_finale_, his eye fell upon Paganini, who, calmly seated in the
+manager's box, had been behind none in zealous applause. The small
+and piercing black eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the
+Stradivarius in the hands of Franz, but otherwise he seemed quite cool
+and unconcerned. His rival's face troubled him for one short instant,
+but he regained his self-possession and, lifting once more his bow,
+drew the first note.
+
+Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and soon knew no bounds.
+The listeners heard and saw indeed. The witches' voices resounded in
+the air, and beyond all the other voices, one voice was heard--
+
+    Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;
+    It seem'd of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
+    The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
+    The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion's roar;
+    The sounds of billows beating on the shore;
+    The groan of winds among the leafy wood,
+    And burst of thunder from the rending cloud;--
+    'Twas these, all these in one....
+
+The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering sounds--famous among
+prodigious musical feats--imitating the precipitate flight of the
+witches before bright dawn; of the unholy women saturated with the
+fumes of their nocturnal Saturnalia, when--a strange thing came to pass
+on the stage. Without the slightest transition, the notes suddenly
+changed. In their aerial flight of ascension and descent, their melody
+was unexpectedly altered in character. The sounds became confused,
+scattered, disconnected ... and then--it seemed from the sounding-board
+of the violin--came out squeaking, jarring tones, like those of a street
+Punch, screaming at the top of a senile voice:
+
+"Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy?... Have not I gloriously kept my
+promise, eh?"
+
+The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize the whole
+situation, those who heard the voice and the _Punchinello_-like tones,
+were freed, as by enchantment, from the terrible charm under which
+they had been held. Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of
+half-anger and half-irritation were now heard from every corner of the
+vast theater. The musicians in the orchestra, with faces still blanched
+from weird emotion, were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole
+audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet to solve the
+enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted, too disposed to laugh
+to remain one moment longer in the building.
+
+But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls and the pit
+became once more motionless, and stood petrified as though struck by
+lightning. What all saw was terrible enough--the handsome though wild
+face of the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect figure
+bent down, as though under the weight of years; but this was nothing
+to that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived. Franz
+Stenio's person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist,
+cloud-like, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually tightening
+round the living form, as though ready to engulf him. And there were
+those also who discerned in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a
+clearly-defined figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of
+a grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old man, whose
+viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the
+violin.
+
+Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was then seen, driving
+his bow furiously across the human chords, with the contortions of a
+demoniac, as we see them represented on medieval cathedral paintings!
+
+An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and breaking now,
+for the last time, through the spell which had again bound them
+motionless, every living creature in the theater made one mad rush
+towards the door. It was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human
+torrent, roaring amid a shower of discordant notes, idiotic squeakings,
+prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous cries of frenzy, above which,
+like the detonations of pistol shots, was heard the consecutive
+bursting of the four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that
+bewitched violin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the theater was emptied of the last man of the audience, the
+terrified manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate
+performer. He was found dead and already stiff, behind the footlights,
+twisted up into the most unnatural of postures, with the "catguts"
+wound curiously around his neck, and his violin shattered into a
+thousand fragments....
+
+When it became publicly known that the unfortunate would-be rival of
+Niccolo Paganini had not left a cent to pay for his funeral or his
+hotel-bill, the Genoese, his proverbial meanness notwithstanding,
+settled the hotel-bill and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.
+
+He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of the Stradivarius--as
+a momento of the strange event.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_There is no Religion Higher than Truth_
+
+THE
+
+UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD
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+
+                     *       *
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+THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, founded by H. P.
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+
+
+
+
+The International Brotherhood League
+
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+    cloth, 400 pages. Postpaid                           $2.25
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+
+  =Nightmare Tales= (H. P. Blavatsky). _Illustrated by R.
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+    the profoundest mystical philosophy.
+    Cloth                                                  .60
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+
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+    pages; cloth. Postage prepaid                       $10.00
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+    Bhagavad Gita--Co-Heirs with Christ--Jesus the Man (the
+    only known personal description)
+
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+    the Lord
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+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following corrections have been made, on page
+
+7 "situa-ation" changed to "situation" (a clearer comprehension of the
+situation)
+
+13 " added (perish in the Ocean of Maya.")
+
+14 "sanctury" changed to "sanctuary" (had only peeped into the
+sanctuary)
+
+16 "sancity" changed to "sanctity" (purity and sanctity of their lives)
+
+67 "proceded" changed to "proceeded" (I proceeded without delay)
+
+68 "wierdness" changed to "weirdness" (are heard in all their weirdness)
+
+72 "unaccoutably" changed to "unaccountably" (had so unaccountably
+disappeared ten years before)
+
+97 "unforseen" changed to "unforeseen" (the premature and unforeseen
+formation)
+
+112 "unparalled" changed to "unparalleled" (The unparalleled artist
+arrived)
+
+133 "the the" changed to "the" (he carefully rosined the bow)
+
+142 "in in" changed to "in" (in many cases they permit).
+
+Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual and
+inconsistent spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nightmare Tales, by H. P. Blavatsky
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