diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/44559.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/44559.txt | 4618 |
1 files changed, 4618 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/44559.txt b/old/44559.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1608a61 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44559.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4618 @@ +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 + +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 Raja 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. Kamaloka 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. + + =Raja Yoga Messenger.= _Illustrated._ Monthly. Yearly + subscription .50 + Unsectarian publication for Young Folk, conducted + by a staff of pupils of the Raja School at Lomaland + Address MASTER ALBERT G. SPALDING, Business Manager + =Raja 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 Foerlag, Barnhusgatan 10, + Stockholm 1, Sweden. + + =Universale Bruderschaft.= _Illustrated._ Monthly. + Yearly subscription, postpaid 1.50 + J. Th. Heller, ob. Turnstrasse 3, Nuernberg, Germany + + =Lotus-Knoppen.= _Illustrated._ Monthly. Yearly + 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 + in this work are directly helping the great cause of Humanity._ + + + + +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTMARE TALES *** + +***** This file should be named 44559.txt or 44559.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/5/5/44559/ + +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) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |