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Title: The Wonderful Story of Ravalette
Author: Randolph, Paschal Beverly, 1825-1875
Language: English
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THE
WONDERFUL
STORY OF RAVALETTE.
ALSO,
TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE,
THEIR DOUBLE DREAMS AND THE CURIOUS THINGS THAT BEFELL THEM THEREIN;
THE ROSICRUCIAN’S STORY.
BY DR. P. B. RANDOLPH,
“THE DUMAS OF AMERICA,”
AUTHOR OF “WAA, GU-MAH,” “PRE-ADAMITE MAN,” “DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD,”
“IT ISN’T ALL RIGHT,” “THE UNVEILING OF SPIRITISM,” “THE GRAND
SECRET,” “HUMAN LOVE--A PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE,”
ETC., ETC., ETC.
“The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest
verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw
new light on the mysteries of our being.”--
CHANNING.
NEW YORK:
SINCLAIR TOUSEY, 121 NASSAU STREET.
1863.
ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
P. B. RANDOLPH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for
the Southern District of New York.
INTRODUCTORY.
In giving what follows to the world, no one can be more alive to the
fact that this is the latter half of the nineteenth century, and that
the present is emphatically the era of the grandest Utilitarianism,
Revolution, Matter of Fact, and Doubt that the world ever knew, than is
the editor of the following extraordinary tale. He has no apologies to
make for offering it--no excuses, even as a novelist, for departing from
the beaten track of “War, Love, Murder, and Revenge,” “Politics,
Passion, and Prussic acid,” which constitute the staple of the modern
novel.
Disliking all long exordia, we propose to enter at once upon the work
before us, by inquiring: Is there such a thing as real magic--not the
ordinary, chemical, ambidextral jugglery, that passes current among the
vulgar as magic--but the real old mysterious thing, whereof we read in
old black-letter tomes?
Utterly repudiating the pretensions of modern charlatans, and
conscienceless impostors, who deal in “spirit photographs,” and utter
misty phrases about “Life in the Spheres,” “Gloria,” and “Jubilo,”
together with schemes to reform the world--namely, by means of Indiana
divorces, improved “Lieceums,” “Air-lying dispatches,” via _Caput
Assinorum_, and much other.
“Canting, radical jabber and jaw,
’Bout Mornia and Hornia, and Starnos and ’Cor,
Hocus and pocus, and nong-tong-paw;
All stupid crams, not worth a straw.”
Not because there are no spirits, for one case in a million of reported
spectral phenomena, may be true, but _all_ are totally unreliable--that
is, they lie--and the person who places the least confidence in them in
one thousand instances, is sure to be deceived nine hundred and
ninety-nine times, and only reach approximate truth and fact in the
thousandth.
Spiritualism is yet the great _non sequitur_ of the age, so far as the
vast majority of mankind is concerned--for while one portion of its
phenomena may be really spiritual, the remaining nine hundred and
ninety-nine portions are referable to something else than human ghosts.
Spiritualism has done no good whatever, save in that it has called
attention to new directions, thereby stimulating the spirit of inquiry;
but in itself it is yet far from being among the certainties.
I here disavow all intention to deride true spirit phenomena, if such
there be; nor do I question the transmundane life of man--for the belief
in immortality is a part of my very being--but, while ignoring the
claims, and deriding the absurd pretensions of the vast majority of
modern Eolists and self-styled mediums, I repeat the question: Is there
any positive means or ways whereby even a favored few can penetrate the
mysterious veil that hangs like an iron pall between the great human
multitude and the infinitely greater BEYOND? Is it possible to break
through the awful barrier--to glimpse through the Night-Curtain that
screens and shrouds us from the Phantom-World?--if such there be.
“Deep the gulph that hides the dead--
Long and dark the way they tread.”
Can we know it? Can we by any possibility scan its secrets? Nor are we
alone in propounding questions such as these; for every intelligent
person, at some period or other, puts them to himself and neighbor, but,
in the majority of cases, vainly. The writer hereof, like the great mass
of people, has often propounded these queries, the result being a
confirmed and indurated scepticism--which scepticism was, almost
ruthlessly, swept away by the extraordinary series of events about to be
recorded in these pages.
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF RAVALETTE.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE STRANGE MAN.
“In the most high and palmy days of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”
And he sat him down wearily by the side of the road. Wearily, for he had
journeyed far that day. He was footsore, and his bodily powers were
nearly exhausted by reason of the want and privation he had undergone.
His looks were haggard, and a _pathetic_ pall, gloomy and tearful, hung
and floated around him, invisible to, but sensibly felt by, all who
lingered near, or gazed upon him. A sorrowful man was he.
And as he sat there by the roadside, he leaned his head upon the staff
which he held in his hand; and as he bowed him down, the great salt
tears gushed from between his fingers, and watered the ground at his
feet. In other days the cypress, plant of sorrow, sprung up there, and
throve in sad and mournful beauty, as if to mark and guard the spot
whereon the strong man had lifted up his voice and wept aloud--once upon
a time.
This was many years ago; and this was the occasion on which I became
acquainted with the personage who figures so remarkably in this
volume.[1] At that time the writer practically accepted, but mentally
disbelieved, all the religious and psychologic faiths of Christendom;
and, had any man even hinted at certain mysterious possibilities that
have since then been verified and demonstrated, I should most certainly
have laughed in his face, and have reckoned him up as a first-class fool
or idiot. Things have changed since then.
[1] The same personage is the principal character in the romance of
“Dhoula Bel, or the Magic Globe,” which will ere long be published.
He was a man of middle height, was neither stout nor slender, but, when
in full flesh, was a happy medium between the two. His head and brain
were large, and, from certain peculiarities of form, really much more
massive than they appeared. The skull was long and narrow at the base,
especially about the ears; but above that line the brain was deep, broad
and high, indicating great powers of _endurance_, with but moderate
physical force, it being clearly apparent that the mental structure
sustained itself to a great degree at the expense of the muscles, his
nervous system, as in all such organizations, being morbidly acute and
sensitive. There was, naturally or organically, nothing about him
either coarse, brutal, low or vulgar, and if, in the race of life, he
exhibited any of those bad qualities, it was attributable to the rough
circumstances attendant upon him, and the treatment he received from the
world. By nature he was open, frank, benevolent and generous to a fault,
and of these traits men availed themselves to his sorrow. With abundant
capacity to successfully grapple with the most profound and abstruse
questions of philosophy or metaphysics, yet this man was totally
incompetent to conduct matters of the least business, requiring even a
very moderate financial ability. Such are nature’s contradictions, such
her law of compensation.
As a consequence, this man, with abilities universally conceded to be
good, was the ready victim of the first plausible knave that came along,
from the “friend” who borrowed half his cash, and undertook to invest
the balance--and kept the whole, to the printer of his books, who
swindled him of both time and money.
His complexion was tawny, resembling that of the Arab children of
Beyroot and Damascus. The shape and set of the chin, jaws and lips, were
indicative rather of power than force. The mouth, in its slightly
protruding upper lip, and two small ridges at the corners, betokened
executive ability, passion, courage, affection, humor, firmness and
decision. The cheeks were slightly sunken, indicating care and trouble,
while the cheek-bones, being somewhat high and broad, betrayed his
aboriginal ancestry, as did also his general beardlessness, for, save a
tuft beneath the chin of jet black silky hair, and a thin and light
mustache, he could lay no claim to hirsute distinction. His nose, which
had been broken by a fall when a child, was neither large nor small, and
as a simple feature, was in no respect remarkable; but taken with the
other features, was most decidedly so, for when under the influence of
passion, excitement or emotion, there was an indescribable something
about the alæ and nostrils that told you that a volcano slumbered in
that man’s brain and heart, only it required a touch, a vent, in the
right direction, to wake its fires and cause it to blaze forth
vehemently, transforming him in an instant from a passive, uncomplaining
man, into the embodiment of virtuous championship of the cause that was
true, or into a demon of hatred and vindictive fury. The good prevailed;
for the evil spasm was ever a spasm only--save in a very few marked
cases, where he had suffered wrongs, deep and grievous, at the hands of
men whose meanness and duplicity toward himself he only discovered when
they had gained their points and ruined him. These men he hated--and yet
that word does not convey the true idea. His feeling was not vindictive,
but was a craving for, and determination to exact justice for his
wrongs. This satisfied, his ill will died on the instant. His eyes, or
rather eye--for one was nearly lost from an accident--was a deep, dark
hazel, and such as people are in the habit of describing as jet black.
It shone with a lustre peculiar, and strangely magnetic when he let his
soul go forth upon winged words from the rostrum, for he had been a
public speaker in his time, and had won no small degree of fame on that
field.
Once seen and heard, this man was one whom it was impossible ever to
forget, so different was he from all other men, and so marked and
peculiar were his characteristics.
Such, in brief, were the externals of the person to whom the reader is
here introduced.
A very singular man was he--the Rosicrucian--I knew him well. Many an
hour, subsequent to that in which he is here introduced, have we sat
together beneath the grateful shade of some glorious old elm on the
green, flowery banks of Connecticut’s silver stream, and under some
towering dome palm beside the bosom of still older Nilus, in the hoary
land of the Pharaohs, of magic and of myth, he all the while pouring
into my ear strange, very strange legends indeed--legends of Time and
the other side of Time--all of which my thirsty soul drank in as the
sun-parched earth drinks in the grateful showers, or the sands of Zin
the tears of weeping clouds. And these tales, these legends put to shame
the wildest fictions of Germany and the terror-haunted Hartz.
Particularly was I struck with a half hint that once escaped his lips,
to the effect that some men on the earth, himself among the number, had
preëxisted on this sphere, and that at times he distinctly remembered
localities, persons and events that were cotemporary with him before he
occupied his present form, and consequently that his real age exceeded
that even of Ahasuerus, the Jew, who, in the dolorous road, mocked the
Man of Calvary, as he bore his cross up the steep and stony way, for
which _leze majeste_ he was doomed to walk the earth, an outcast and
vagabond, from that hour till Shiloh comes, according to the legends of
Jewry.
My friend, during our intimacy, often spoke concerning white magic, and
incidentally insisted on his curious doctrine of transmigration. Nor was
this all: He taught that the souls of people sometimes vacated their
bodies for weeks together, during which they were occupied by other
souls, sometimes that of a permanently disembodied man of earth; at
others, that of an inhabitant of the aëreal spaces, who, thus embodied,
roamed the earth at will. He, when closely questioned, declared his firm
belief that he had lived down through many ages, and that for reasons
known to himself, he was doomed to live on, like the great
Artefius--that other Rosicrucian--until a certain consummated act
(wherein he was to be involuntarily an active party) should release him
from it and permit him to share the lot of other men.
As a consequence of his dissimilarity from others he appeared to have
been endowed with certain hyper-mental powers, among which was a strange
intro-vision, not the fraudulent clairvoyance claimed and palmed off
upon the world by the arch impostor of Poughkeepsie, and others of the
same kidney, but something analogous to that attributed to the
oracle-priestesses of Delphos and Delos. This power, which was not
always present, enabled him to behold and describe things, persons and
events, even across the widest gulfs of ocean; and to read the secret
history and thoughts of the most secretive, self-possessed and
subtle-minded man as easily as if it were a printed scroll. When this
ecstasy was on him he looked as if, at that moment, he beheld things
forever sealed from the majority of eyes, and that too both with and
without his wonderful magic mirror. At first I doubted his pretensions,
mentally referred them to an abnormal state of mind, and, until they
were abundantly demonstrated, laughed at the preposterous idea, as I
considered it, of any one seriously claiming such extraordinary powers
in the middle of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. As
previously remarked, his complexion told that he was a _sang mêlée_--not
a direct cross--but one in which at least seven distinct strains of
blood intermingled, if they did not perfectly blend. Save when in high
health and spirits, and weather extremely cold--at which times he was
pale--his color was a rich, light bronze, like that of the youngsters
one sees in such profusion, scampering like mad through the narrow and
tortuous streets of Syrio-Arabic cities, demanding “Bucksheesh” from
every Frank they see. With his large, broad, high brain, arched and open
brow, his massive, elliptical and angular top-head, he was a marked man,
and when his soul was at high tide, and his deep and mystic inspirations
thrilled and filled him to the brim, his eye beamed with unearthly fire,
glowed like the orbs of a Pythoness, and scintillated a light peculiarly
its own. Whoever saw him then never forgot the sight, for he seemed to
have the power of glancing instantaneously through the world--Time,
space--everything and everywhere. Judging by his speech alone, one would
have thought his education might not have been altogether neglected, but
that it certainly was of a kind and quality entirely different from
that usually received in Christian lands. There was very little, if any,
polish about him--not that he lacked urbanity, courteousness or
smoothness--not that he was rude or rough in any way, but his placidity
was that of the river, forest or lake, not that of the boudoir or the
schools of _politesse_. He was extremely enigmatical, and the most so
when he appeared most frank in all that pertained to his inner life and
world; and was more sphynx-like to me at the end of ten years’ intimacy
than on the first day of our acquaintance. He had, though poor,
travelled extensively. Oriental in personal appearance and physical
tastes, he was still more so in disposition and mind, and in all that
pertained to dreamery, philosophy and the affections.
With this description of the principal personage of this narrative, I
now proceed to sketch another part of the man.
CHAPTER II.
HIS EARLY DAYS--THE STRANGE LEGEND.
And there sat the man at the side of the road--sat there mournfully,
silently weeping--the strange man!--as if his heart would break, and not
from slight cause was he sorrowing. Not from present want of food,
shelter, or raiment, but because his heart was full, and its fountains
overflowing. The world had called him a genius, and as such had petted,
praised, admired, and starved him all at once; but not one grain of true
sympathy all the while; not a single spark of true disinterested
friendship. The great multitude had gathered about him as city
sight-seers gather round the last new novelty in the museum--a child
with two heads, a dog with two tails, or the Japanese mermaid--duly
compounded of codfish and monkey--and then, satisfied with their
inspection, they turned from, and left him in all his deep loneliness
and misery, all the more bitter for the transient light of sympathy
thrown momentarily upon him. Genius must be sympathetically treated,
else it eats its own heart, and daily dies a painful, lingering death.
Throwing aside all his theories about preëxistence, and triple life, as
being too recondite for either my readers or myself, we come at once to
his natural, matter-of-fact history. At eight years of age he had been
christened in the Roman Catholic Church, by the name of Beverly. From
his father our hero inherited little save a lofty spirit, an ambitious,
restless nature, and a susceptibility to passional emotions, so great
that it was a permanent and positive influence during his entire life.
His fifth year began and completed the only school education the boy
ever had, and for all his subsequent attainments in that direction he
was indebted to his own unaided exertions. His father loved him little;
his mother loved him as the apple of her eye--and all the more because
being born with a full and complete set of teeth, old gossips and
venerable grey-beards augured a strange and eventful career; beside
which, certain singular spectral visitations and experiences of his
mother, ere, and shortly after the young eyes opened on the world,
convinced her that he was born to no common destiny--much of which has
already been detailed at length in “Dhoula Bel: or the Magic Globe.” Two
or three and twenty years prior to the opening of this tale, there lived
at what then was No. 70 Canal street, New York city, a woman whose
complexion was that of a Mississippi octoroon. She was a native of
Vermont, had the reputation of being the most beautiful woman in the
State, if indeed she was surpassed anywhere. Her mind was as rich in its
stores and resources as her person was in feminine graces. Her life up
to that time had been a checkered, and in the main, a very unhappy one,
for her refinement, nature, education, character and acquirements, were
such as to demand a broader, higher, better social sphere than what,
from pecuniary want, she now occupied and moved in. Another cause of
unrest was that she was maritally mismatched altogether, for her
husband, after years of absence, during which she had deemed him dead,
and contracted a second alliance with the father of her boy, had
suddenly returned, and never from that moment did she receive one
particle of what her heart yearned for--that domestic love and sympathy,
ever the matron’s due, and which alone can render life a blessing, and
smooth the rugged, thorny pathway to the tomb.
Flora Beverly claimed immediate kindred with the red-skinned sons of the
northern wilderness, but that blood in her veins mingled with the finer
current derived from her ancestor, the Cid--a strain of royal blood that
in the foretime had nerved noble-souled men to deeds of valor, and fired
the souls of Spanish poets to lofty achievements in the rosy fields of
immortal song. She had been tenderly reared--perhaps too much so--for
her strange and wonderful beauty, flashing out upon the world from her
large and lustrous eyes, and beaming forth from every feature and
movement, had been such that she had become marked in community from
early childhood, and her parents, looking upon her as a special
providence to them, had unwisely cultured qualities in her that had
better have been held in abeyance. By over-care and morbid solicitude
they had nearly spoiled God’s handiwork, and she grew up an imperious,
self-willed, exacting, and sensitive queen. She married, and expected to
find herself the centre of a realm of unalloyed joy and delight, wherein
her reign would be undisputed. The man she wedded took her for her
beauty, expecting to realize a perfect heaven in its possession. Both
were bitterly disappointed. The man could appreciate only the external
and superficial qualities and excellences of his wife, while her inner,
higher, better self--her soul, was a _terra incognita_ to him, which,
like so many other husbands, he never even once dreamed of exploring; he
had no idea whatever of the inestimable qualities of her heart,
intellect, or spirit, and he had never found out that her body is the
least a woman gives away--that she has gifts so regal for the man she
loves, that glittering diamonds are sparkless, insipid, valueless in
comparison.
And so, the first delirious joy-month over, they both began to
awaken--the man to the fact that to him his wife was a “very pretty
doll,” the woman that her husband was--a brute, whose soul slept soundly
beneath the coverlets of sense, and herself its victim and minister. It
was horrible; she lost heart, she despised this surface man, and sunk
and lost bloom beneath the terrible weight of the discovery and its
fearful results. Married, she had expected to move in a sphere very far
above that which, by the laws of moral and mental gravity, she was
compelled to occupy. Her horizon was henceforth to be bounded by that of
her master and his associates. Her husband was vain of his conquest, and
one of his greatest joys was found in parading and showing off her
beauty to the best advantage, like a jockey does a fine horse--and
feeling, jockey-like the while, “all this is _mine_!” Neither himself nor
his associates in life could appreciate that more than royal loveliness
which dwells within the breasts of educated and refined women--a beauty
which eye hath never seen, which eye can never see, but which, like soft
and delicate perfume, radiates from such to all who are fine enough to
perceive it.
As a matter of course, she soon grew weary and disgusted with this
surface-life. Feeling that she was unappreciated by the living thousands
around her, she, with the true instinct of the Indian, spurned their
contact, fell back upon herself, and then, with every tendril of her
soul, turned and yearned toward the teeming millions of the dead. She
invoked them to her aid, and religiously believed her prayers
answered--as I do--and delivering herself up wholly to their weird care
and guidance, thenceforward lived a double life--a shadow-life in the
world, a real life in the phantom land. True to the natural instinct of
the human heart, just in proportion as she withdrew from the world, so
did she approach that awful veil which is only uplifted for the sons and
daughters of sorrow and the starbeam. She became a seeress, a dreamer,
and, in what to her was an actual, positive communion with the lordly
ghosts of the dead nations, whereof, in both lines, her forefathers had
been chiefs, she sought that sympathy in her sorrows, and in her strange
internal joys--that mysterious balm of healing, which the red man in his
religion--or superstition, if you will--believes can only thus and there
be had. And she found what she sought, or what to the spontaneous and
impulsive soul amounts to the same thing, believed that she had found
it. At first she had some difficulty in correctly translating into her
human language of heart and word that which she took to be the low
whisperings of the aërial dwellers of the viewless kingdom of MANATOU.
She ardently longed for a more open intercourse with the dead, and, as
herein stated, as well as in “Dhoula Bel,” was gratified.
Poor Flora! half-child of Nature and of Art, was destined to bear a
child, and that child the man of these volumes--in the very midst of the
conditions here sketched, under these conditions he was born.
As already stated, beneath this woman’s heart there slumbered the fires
of a volcano, intense, fervent, quenchless, the result alike of her
peculiar ancestry and peculiar training. Her full soul became
re-incarnate in the son she bore; and with it she endowed the child with
her own intense desire to love and be loved; all her mystic spirit, her
love of mystery; all her unearthly aspiration toward unearthly
association; all her resolute, yet half-desponding, quick, impulsive,
passionate, generous nature; all, all, found in him a local habitation
and a name, and that name was Genius.
Thus moulded came he into the world, doomed from birth to strange and
bitter experiences--to face alone and unfriended the bitter blasts of
wintry storms, and the burning heats of summer suns; to cling to the
hope of speedy death, all the while grasping existence with ten-fold the
tenacity of others, yet daily pleading for life--strange
contradiction!--dear life, at the world’s stern bar; pleading daily, yet
as often losing his suit, and being by that world sentenced to be
utterly cast adrift on the fickle tide of Fate and Chance, and that too
with a mind and body acutely sensitive, and constantly at war with each
other.
Compensation is a universal principle. While so alive to pain, he was
equally so to the jouissant emotions, and his delights, when they came,
were keen, fine, exquisite, to a remarkable degree. As throwing some
light on the character of this man--who is not a myth, but an actual
existence--I will here repeat the substance of an account himself gave
of his early life and weird and ghostly experiences. He had been
questioned in regard to certain powers of an unusual kind attributed to
him, and the following reply was elicited:
“When I was a very young child, my mother dwelt in a large, sombre and
gloomy old stone house on Manhattan Island. At that time New York was
about one quarter as large as at present, and that house was a long way
out of town. It still stands in the same place, but the city has grown
miles beyond it. The building, in times of pestilence, fever, smallpox,
and cholera, had been used as a pest-house, or lazaretto, and in it
thousands have died of those diseases, and from there, in my fifth year,
the soul of my mother took its everlasting flight.
“Scores of people there were ready to testify on oath that the old house
was haunted by ghosts, who strode grimly and silently through the
solemn, stately halls of that massive island castle. But it generally
happened that the witnesses of these spectral visitants had neither
time nor inclination to cultivate their acquaintance--save one, an
apothecary named Banker, who cursed and swore at one of them on a
certain occasion, whereupon the ghost slapped his face, and completely
turned and withered his lower jaw by way of punishment for the _leze
majeste_. With this exception, those who met one of these ghosts,
invariably had urgent business in an opposite direction, and it was
quite surprising with what wonderful speed lame persons got over the
ground whenever a ghost was declared to be around, by those who being
born with a ‘caul’ over the face, were thereby endowed with the
spectre-seeing faculty; and as such gifted ones could see, I used often
to wish I could meet some who had been born with _two_ cauls, so that
they might speak to as well as see them.
“Some people do not believe in ghosts. I do, ghosts of various kinds. I.
It is possible to project an image of one’s self, which image may be
seen by another however distant. II. The phantasmal projections of
heated fancy--spectral illusion--the results of cerebral fever, as in
drunken delirium, opium and other fantasies. III. The spirits of dead
men. IV. Spiritual beings from other planets. V. Beings from original
worlds, who have not died, but who, nevertheless, are of so fine texture
as to defy the material laws which we are compelled to obey, and who,
coming under the operation of those that govern disembodied men, are
enabled to do all that they do. VI. I believe that human beings, by the
action of desperate, wicked wills, frequently call into being spectral
harpies--the horrible embodiment of their evil thoughts. These are
demons, subsisting so long as their creators are under the domination of
the evil. VII. I believe in a similar creation emanating from good
thoughts of good people, lovely out-creations of aspiring souls.
Remember these seven. This is a clear statement of the Rosicrucian
doctrine of the higher order of their temple. In the lower, these seven
pass under the names of Gnomes, Dwarfs, Sylphs, Salamanders, Nereiads,
Driads and Fays.
“One day, when I was about five years old, I returned from school, and
found the clayey vestment--the fleshly form of the only friend I ever
had, my mother, cold and prone in the arms of icy cold, unrelenting
Death. Ah! what a shock was that to my poor little childish heart! She
had that morning grown weary of earth, had serenely, trustingly closed
her darling eyes, and I was left alone to battle single-handed against
four mighty and powerful enemies--Prejudice, Poverty and Organization
were three of them. The fourth is almost too terrible, too wild and
fanciful to be credited, yet I will state it:
THE LEGEND.
“Many, very many centuries ago, there lived on the soil where in
subsequent ages stood Babylon and Nineveh the first, a mighty king,
whose power was great and undisputed. He was wise, well-learned and
eccentric. He had a daughter lovely beyond all description. She was as
learned as she was beautiful. Kings and princes sought her hand in
vain; for her father had sworn to give her to no man save him who should
solve a riddle which the king himself would propound, and solve it at
the first trial, under penalty of decapitation on failure. The riddle
was this, ‘What are the three most desirable things beneath the sun,
that are not the sun, yet which dwell within the sun?’ Thousands of the
gay, the grave, the sage and ambitious who essayed the solution, and
failed, left the presence to mount the horse of death.
“In the meantime, proclamation was made far and wide, declaring that
robes of crimson, chains of gold, the first place in the kingdom and the
princess should be the reward of the lucky man.
“One day there came to the court a very rich and royal embassy from the
King of the South, seeking an alliance, and propounding new treaties;
and among the suite was a young Basinge poet, who acted as interpreter
to the embassy. This youth heard of the singular state of things,
learned the conditions, and got the riddle by heart. For four long
months did he ponder upon and study it, revolving in his mind all sorts
of answers, but without finding any that fulfilled the three requisites.
“In order to study more at his ease, the youth was in the habit of
retiring to a grotto behind the palace, and there repeating to himself
the riddle and all sorts of possible responses thereto. The princess
hearing of this, determined to watch him, and did so. Now, poets must
sing, and this one was particularly addicted to that sort of exercise;
and he made it a point to imagine all sorts of perfections as residing
in the princess, and he sung his songs daily in the grotto--sung himself
desperately in love with his ideal, and so inflamed the girl herself,
who had managed to both see and hear him, herself unseen, that she loved
him dearer than life. Here, then, were two people made wretched by a
whim.
“Love and song are very good in their places, but, for a steady diet,
are not comparable to many other things; and, as this couple fed on
little else, they both pined sadly and rapidly away.
“At length, one day, the youth fell asleep in the grotto, and his head
rested directly over a fissure in the rock through which there issued a
very fine and subtle vapor, which had the effect of throwing the young
man in a trance, during which he fancied he saw the princess herself,
unveiled, and more lovely than the flowers that bloomed in the king’s
garden. He also thought he saw an inscription, which bade him despair
not, but TRY! and, at the same time, there flowed into his mind this
sentence, which subsequently became the watchword of the mystic
fraternity which, for some centuries, has been known as that of the
Rosie Cross--‘There is no difficulty to him who truly wills.’ Along with
this there came a solution of the king’s riddle, which he remembered
when he awoke, and instantly proclaimed his readiness to attempt that
which had cost so many adventurers their lives.
“Accordingly, the grandest preparations--including a man with a drawn
blade ready to make the poet shorter by the head if he failed--were
made, and, at an appointed hour, all the court, the princess included,
convened in the largest hall of the palace. The poet advanced to the
foot of the throne, and there knelt, saying, ‘O king, live for ever!
What three things are more desirable than Life, Light and Love? What
three are more inseparable? and what better cometh from the sun, yet is
not the sun? O king! is thy riddle answered?’ ‘True!’ said the king;
‘you have solved it, and my word shall be kept!’ And he straightway gave
commands to have the marriage celebrated in royal style, albeit, through
the influence of a high court official, he hated poets in general, and
this one particularly so, because he thought the young man had foiled
him in one of the treaties just made. Now, it so happened that the grand
vizier had hoped by some means to get a solution of the riddle, and
secure the great prizes for a young son of his own; and, as soon as the
divan was closed, that very day, he hastened to the closet of the king,
and there still further poisoned the mind of his master against the
victor, by charging him with having succeeded through the aid of
sorcery, which so enraged the king that he readily agreed to remove the
claimant by means of a speedy, secret, and cruel death that very night,
to which end the poet was drugged in his wine at the evening banquet,
conveyed to a couch openly, and almost immediately thereafter removed to
the chamber allotted to the refractory servants of the court. This
apartment was under ground, and the youth, being thrown violently on the
floor, revived, and was astonished to find himself bound hand and foot
in presence of the king, his vizier, a few soldiers, and--death; for he
saw at a glance that his days were numbered. He defended himself from
the charge of sorcery, but in vain. He was doomed to die, and the order
given, when, just as the blow was about to fall, there appeared the
semblance of a gigantic hand, moving as if to stay the uplifted blade;
but too late. The sword fell, and, as it reached the neck of the victim,
he uttered the awful words, ‘I curse ye all who--’ the rest of the
sentence was spoken in eternity; but there came a clamor and a clangor
as of a thousand protesting spectral voices, and one of them said, in
tones of thunder, ‘This youth, by persistence of will, had unbarred the
gates between this world and that of mystery. He was the first of his
and thy race that ever achieved so great an honor. And ye have slain
him, and he hath cursed thee, by reason of which thou, O king! and thou,
O vizier! and the dead man, have all changed the human for another
nature. The first shall go down the ages, transmigrating from form to
form. Thou, O vizier! shall also exist till thou art forgiven;--DHOULA
BEL shall be thy name; and thou shalt tempt the king through long ages,
and be foiled whenever the youth--who shall be called the
STRANGER--shall so will, for the sake of the love he bore thy daughter.
This drama shall last and be until a son of Adam shall wed with a
daughter of Ish, or thou, king, in one of the phases of thy being, shall
love, and be truly, fully loved again, and for thyself alone. An
eternity may elapse ere then!’”
* * * * *
“Ask me not,” said the young Beverly, “_why_, but believe me when I say
that I _know_ that ages ago I was that king; that the Stranger has been
seen by my mother; that Dhoula Bel still haunts and tempts me for the
sin of ages. I know the fate impending over me, and that in this my
present form I am a neutral being, for whom there is no hope save
through the union of myself, a son of Adam’s race, with a daughter of
Ish, one not of Adam’s race.... This, then, is the dreadful fate to
which I was left so pitilessly exposed on the morning that my mother
died on Manhattan Island--left to pay the penalty of a crime committed
thousands of years ago.”
CHAPTER III.
A SPECTRAL VISITANT.
It must be confessed that this was a singular story, and smelled very
strongly of either Hartz-mountainism or its equivalent, imagination. He
continued his story thus:
“I did not know all this at five years old, of course. The only thing I
did fully comprehend was the loss of my mother--her strange silence--the
woeful look of those who hugged my little head and said ‘Poor child!’ I
tried hard to be manly and not cry, as they bade me, but it was useless,
and the tears welled up in floods from my poor little childish heart.
Have you ever lost a mother?
“As I nestled on the bed where she lay so very still, I asked the
bystanding mourners where the talking part of my mother had gone to? If
she would never talk to, love and pet me any more? and they said ‘Never
more,’ and they repeated that dreadful but untrue refrain till my poor
heart was full almost to bursting, with its load and pressure of grief;
and then I threw myself upon her dear body, and cried till tears refused
to flow, for I had lost my mother, sirs--I had lost my mother! Would
that I could weep _now_ as I did _then_; it would relieve my
over-burdened heart. But I cannot, for the tear fountain seldom thaws.
The floods still gather and well up, but they freeze ere they reach the
surface, and the heart strings snap and crack, but they will not break.
I wish they would, so that I might join, even for a while, that dear
mother whom I loved so well.
“Childhood’s griefs are written with a feather, upon warm parchment,
with stainless ink; but the heart’s greater woes are burned into the
memory with a fiery iron stylus; the first lines speedily wear away; the
last are ineffaceable. As I lay upon the cold breast of my darling
mother, a woman said to me, ‘Do not cry, poor child! She is happy now!
She has just gone up, on her way to heaven!’ And I believed what that
woman said; and I looked out through the deep foliage of the trees hard
by; looked eagerly up into the sky, expecting to see her ascending soul;
and as my eye caught the shadowy fleece of a melting silvery cloud, I
thought and believed it to be my mother’s sainted soul. I half believe
so still; for as the cloud vanished into nothingness on the breast of
the blue, I distinctly heard a voice, gentle, soft, and sweetly
mournful, like unto the dying notes of a wind-harp, lightly touched by
the zephyr’s breath, whisper in my ear these words--which at that time I
could not fully comprehend--‘Lonely one of the ages! there may be rest
for thee in the life thou’rt now commencing. Let thy motto be--TRY!
Despond not, but ever remember that how bitter soever our lot may be,
that despite it all, WE MAY BE HAPPY YET! Peace, poor child! Thou’rt
watched and guarded by thy mother!’ ‘and the stranger,’ added another,
and more silvery voice from out the deep stillness of that noon-tide
heaven. I knew that mystic voice--the first one--and felt that it was
from beyond Time’s threshold. I trusted it’s sacred words of promise,
for I had, child as I was, an unshaken faith, an intuition, if you will,
that instant flowing to me, that my blessed mother still lived.
“From that hour commenced a strange, double existence to and in me. Two
instances, perfectly true in all respects, I will relate, either of
which forever settled in my mind that some human beings consciously
survive the ordeal of death. Not long after my irreparable loss, I,
along with several other children, went to bed in the roof chamber of
that dark old house. Something had occurred of a merry turn, and we were
all brimful of joy and glee, and our mirth was as loud as it dared be
for fear of the ogres down stairs, who had a bad habit of enforcing
silence through the medium of sundry straps and birch twigs. In the very
midst of the uproar the bed-clothes were slowly, carefully lifted from
off us by agencies totally invisible. We pulled them back; but again and
again they were removed, and the movement was accompanied by a din and
clatter, as if fifty cannon balls were rolling on the floor; and it
immediately brought the ogres and their straps from down stairs to see
what was the matter. So far as terror permitted we explained, whereupon
the ogres looked scaredly wise, readjusted the quilts and retreated. No
sooner had they left than the cannon balls began again to roll over the
floor, and mustering courage to rise and grapple for the coverlet,
which had again been pulled from us, I clearly and distinctly saw a
female figure calmly standing at the foot of the bed, but not upon the
floor, for she floated like a vapor on the air. There was but little, if
any, light in the room, save that which surrounded, and appeared to
emanate from the spectral figure. She stood in the midst of a silvery or
phosphoric haze. It was by no means phantasmal in appearance, but so
clear, sharp, well defined did the apparition seem, that to this day I
remember distinctly the figures on what appeared to be the dress she
wore, which fact involves a mystery no psychologist has yet been able to
fathom satisfactorily. The children who also saw this sight were
terrified; I was not, for I felt she would not harm me, for the reason
that mothers love their offspring, and that figure was my mother.
“Some considerable time elapsed after this. I had grown into a stout and
active boy, having already drifted for some years up and down the world,
and once found myself registered as cabin boy on board the brig Phœbe,
of New Bedford, whereof one Alonzo Baker was captain--not of New
Bedford--but the brig.
“In this vessel I served for several months, to the satisfaction of no
one, myself included, being too small, weak and delicate for the arduous
duties required of me, and consequently had to pay the usual penalty.
“Sailors, to a man, are superstitious, though less so now than in the
days whereof I am speaking. Still, at present, it is not hard, in spite
of the march of intellect, to find sailors who, between the dog-watch
and eight bells, will spin you a yarn under the weather rail that will
make a man’s hair stand on end like hairs on an enraged kitten.
“On board the Phœbe there were several old salts, and many were the
tales they told of the ghosts of murdered sailors, appearing in the
midst of dreadful storms, to encourage foremast Jacks, and frighten the
souls of guilty mates and captains; and of course all this tended to
deepen the vein of superstition and mysticism running through me. Often
have I been apprized of the presence and power of the dead or of those
who never die, and, when tempted to share the dangerous pleasures of my
older comrades, been mysteriously saved.
“Sailors, like everybody else, are fond of power, and delight in lording
it over those whom chance or accident places in their power; and on
every vessel there is one man who is sure to be the butt and target for
petty tyranny and abuse. On board the Phœbe this fell to my lot; and not
being able to forcibly resist, I took care to hide in my chest about a
gallon of rum, into which about half an ounce of croton oil, from the
medicine chest had previously been poured. I labelled the jug ‘Poison.’
Croton oil is the most infamously active purgative known. The sailors
found the jug, read the label--didn’t believe it--drank the liquor, and
were actively engaged for several hours thereafter, as a consequence. A
more earnest, swift-moving set of men were never seen. They had no
relish for supper that night. They beat me unmercifully, but I was
revenged. Still they abused me, until one day a sailor tweaked my nose
in the galley, and for his pains received half a gallon of hot lard in
the waist-band, which troubled him wonderfully.... At last I meditated
suicide as a relief, and, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, such as
boys only are subject to, actually ran aft to accomplish it by leaping
over the taffrail into the surging sea, when I was arrested by a narrow
blast of warm--almost hot air, which thrilled me to the very centre of
my being, and almost pinned me to the deck, while at the same time there
flowed into my soul an eloquent and indignant protest against my supreme
folly, accompanied by the spoken words, ‘Be patient! TRY!’
“It is impossible to attribute all these things to imagination.
“One evening, a long time after the occurrence just related, a company
of ladies and gentlemen, in a house situated near the observatory,
Portland, Maine, were conversing upon the general subject of ghosts, and
rewards and punishments after death. When we sat down there were
thirteen persons in the room, and thirteen persons only. We became
deeply absorbed in the discussion, indeed so much so, that the host gave
the servant strict orders not to disturb us, and to refuse admission to
any person whatever. And thus we all talked freely, the servant seated
in the hall, close by the door. No one was admitted. Presently one
person, by reason of his eloquence and venerable appearance, engrossed
all our attention by the thrilling things he told, although he did not
join the conversation till over an hour after we had begun it; nor did
his conversation appear at all intrusive. He was the _fourteenth_
person, although we did not realize the fact till we were separating,
and he had disappeared. Upon inquiry no one knew him, had ever seen him
before, or observed his departure--not even the servant, who declared
that for two hours no one had passed him either way. It was voted ‘very
strange,’ and that for our own credit sake the matter should be ‘hushed
up;’ but we agreed to meet again at the same house, that day-week, to
discuss the matter, and compare opinions arrived at in the interim.”
CHAPTER IV.
A VERY STRANGE STORY--ETTELAVAR!
“On the appointed evening a select party of us met pursuant to
agreement; but not one had reached a solution of the mystery. In those
days the impostor Davis had not foisted his blasphemous absurdities on
the world; nor had his peculiar system of morals made rogues of the one
half of his deluded followers, or shameless harlots of the other; nor
had lunatic asylums then been packed, as they have since, with sufferers
ruined by his teachings; nor were graveyards dotted with the mounds
raised by weeping friends over loved ones driven to suicide by his
doctrines. In those days a man’s wife was comparatively safe, nor were
divorces half so common as they have since become. In those days
husbands did not sneak off to Indiana, and by blank perjury procure
divorce in order that they might revel in barefaced, shameless, open
lust with their worthy paramours. In those days spiritualism had not
broken in on the world, nor had the goblin philosophy made millions of
fools and idiot fanatics out of material that God created for better
purposes. In those days Joe Smith had not convinced thousands that
harlotry is the straightest road to heaven; nor had Noyes founded his
huge religious brothel in the centre of the State, contaminating the
country for leagues around; and the handy system of ghostology, with its
hundred truths and thousand falsehoods, had not then afforded a ready
explanation of mysteries such as those I have recounted; nor had any man
dared claim to be the confidential secretary of Almighty God.
“On the night in question our conversation became, if possible, more
interesting and absorbing than on the first occasion, owing to the novel
_fillip_ it had then received. So absorbed did I become during the
evening, that on one or two occasions I partially lost myself in a sort
of semi-mesmeric coma, which gradually deepened as the discussion waxed
warmer, until my lower limbs grew cold, and a chilling numbness crept
upon me, creating such a terror that I resolved to make my condition
known, even at the risk of interrupting the discussion.
“I made the trial, and found, to my consternation, that I could not
utter a syllable--I could not move an inch. Horror! The company were so
engrossed with the matter before them, that no notice was taken of any
change that might have been perceptible in me; nor did one person there
suspect that I was not attentively drinking in the discourse.
“With inexpressible alarm, I felt that life itself was fast ebbing from
me, and that death was slowly and surely grasping, clutching, freezing
my vitals. I was dying. Presently--it appeared as if a long interregnum
had occurred between the last previous conscious moment, and the present
instantaneous, but positive agony--a sudden, sharp, tingling pang, like
that of hot needles thrust in the flesh, shot through my brain. This was
followed by a sinking sensation, as if the body had resigned itself to
passive dissolution, and then came, with electric rapidity, a succession
of the most cruel agonies ever endured by mortal man. When it ceased
consciousness had ceased also, and I fell to the floor as one suddenly
dead, to the amazement of the company, as was afterwards declared.
“How long this physical inanition lasted, I cannot now say, but during
it the spiritual part of me was roused to a tenfold degree of activity,
consciousness and power; for it saw things in a new and cryptic light,
and far more distinctly than it ever had through the bodily eyes. An
increase of hearing power accompanied this accretion of sight, and I
heard a voice, precisely like that heard when my mother died, and when
about to throw myself into the sea, which said, ‘Awake! a lesson awaits
you;’ and with this there came a partial rousing from the lethargy, and
I was led upstairs and threw myself upon a sofa, mechanically, at the
same time fixing my eyes upon the bald white face of a rare old Flemish
clock that occupied the entire southern angle of the room. Here I was
left alone by my friends, who again resumed their conversation in the
parlor below.
“Gradually the old clock-face seemed to clarify and expand, until, no
longer obstructed by substance, I gazed out, and down, and up, through
an avenue of the most astonishing light I had ever beheld. It seemed to
me that I no longer occupied my body, but that, freed from flesh and
time, I had become a denizen of Eternity; and on a fleecy vapor I was
sustained in mid-air by the potent arm of a strange-looking old man--the
veritable and precise image of him who, ten days before, had occasioned
us such a fright by his mysterious conversations and evanishment. He
told me not to fear, but to repose implicit confidence in myself and
him; that he would not injure me, but do me good; that his name was
Ettelavar; that his years were ages long; that he was the companion of
those who die--who die, and live again--and of those who never taste of
death. All this, and more, he told me; and he said that his design was
to serve both himself and me; that he was familiar with certain mighty
secrets, that had been claimed to be possessed, through many ages, by
the wise and learned of earth--the Narek El Gebel, the Hermetists, the
Pythagoreans, the three temples of the Rosie Cross, the mediæval and
modern Rosicrucians, and the scattering delvers after mystery in all
ages, times, and places. He said that among the things that I might
learn from him, were the priceless secret of compounding the Elixir of
Life, the drinking of which, by mortals, would confer perpetual youth
and surprising beauty. Then there was the Lethean Draught, and
whomsoever drank thereof, forthwith forgot all care, was oblivious to
all that concerned the Future, and lived intensely in the Present. Then
there was the Water of Love, and whoever drank thereof became
irresistibly magnetic to the opposite sex, and could kindle affection in
the heart of ice by mere personal presence. Then there was the Wondrous
Stone of the Philosophers, not capable of transmuting, by a touch,
whole tons of grossest substance into solid, shining gold, but of making
it chemically. Then there was the Magic Crystal Ball, in which the gazer
could behold whatever he wished to, that was then transpiring on this
earth, or any of the planets. ‘All this knowledge,’ said he, ‘I will
expound to you, on certain conditions to be hereafter mentioned.’
“I relate these things in the briefest possible manner, and make no
allusions to my feelings during the time I listened to the strange
being, Ettelavar, further than to remark, that during the--temptation,
shall it be called?--I seemed to be hovering in the aërial expanse, and
realized a fullness and activity of life never realized before, and knew
for the first time what it was to be a human being. My freed spirit
soared away into the superincumbent ether, and far, very far, beneath us
rolled the great revolving globe; while far away in the black inane,
twinkled myriads of fiery sparks--the starry eyes of God, looking
through the tremendous vault of Heaven. Picture to yourself a soul,
quitting earth, perhaps forever, and hovering over it like a
gold-crested cloud, at set of sun, when all the winds are hushed to
sleep on the still and loving bosom of its protecting God, and thine!
“By the exercise of a power to me unknown, Ettelavar arrested our
motion, and the cloud on which we seemed to float stood still in
mid-air, and he said to me, ‘Look and learn!’
“Like busy insects in the summer sun, afar off in the distance I beheld
large masses of human beings toiling wearily up a steep ascent, over
the summit of which there floated heavily, thick, dense, murky,
gloom-laden clouds. Crimson and red on their edges were they, as if
crowned with thunder, and their bowels overcharged with lightnings; and
their sombre shadows fell upon the plains below, heavy and pall-like,
even as shrouds on the limbs of beauty, or the harsh critic’s sentence
upon the first fruits of budding and aspiring genius. ‘It is nothing but
a crowd,’ said I; and the being at my side repeated, as if in
astonishment, ‘_Nothing_ but a crowd? Boy, the destinies of nations
centre in a crowd. Witness Paris. Look again!’ Obeying mechanically, I
did so, and soon beheld a strange commotion among the people; and I
heard a wail go up--a cry of deep anguish--a sound heavily freighted
with human woe and agony. I shuddered.
“On the extreme apex of the mountain stood a colossal monument, not an
obelisk, but a sort of temple, perfect in its proportions, and
magnificent to the view. This edifice was surmounted by a large and
highly polished golden pyramid in miniature. On all of the faces of this
pyramid was inscribed the Latin word FELICITAS; I asked for an
explanation from my guide, but instead of giving it, he placed his
air-like hand upon my head, and drawing it gently over my brow and eyes,
said, ‘Look!’
“Was there magic in his touch? It really seemed so, for it increased my
visual capacity fifty-fold, and on again turning to the earth beneath
me, I found my interest almost painfully excited by a real drama there
and then enacting. It was clearly apparent that the great majority of
the people were partially, if not wholly blind; and I observed that one
group, near the centre of the plain below the mountain, appeared to be
under much greater excitement than most of the others, and their
turbulence appeared to result from the desire of each individual to
reach a certain golden ball and staff which lay on a cushion of crimson
velvet within the splendid open-sided monument on the mountain. In the
midst of this lesser crowd, energetically striving to reach the
ascending path, was one man who seemed to be endowed with far more
strength and resolution--not of body, but of purpose--than those
immediately around him. Bravely he urged his way toward the mountain’s
top, and, after almost incredible efforts, succeeded. Exultingly he
approached the temple, by his side were hundreds more; he outran them,
entered, reached forth to seize the ball and sceptre--it seemed that the
courageous man must certainly succeed--his fingers touched the prize, a
smile of triumph illumined his countenance, and then suddenly went out
in the blight of death, for he fell to the earth from a deadly blow,
dealt by one treacherous hand from behind, while others seized and
hurled him down the steep abyss upon which the temple abutted, and he
was first dashed to pieces and then trampled out of existence by the
iron heels of advancing thousands--men who saw but pitied not, rather
rejoicing that one rival less was in existence.
“‘Is it possible,’ cried I, internally, ‘that such hell-broth of
vindictiveness boils in human veins?’
“‘Alas, thou seest!’ replied Ettelavar, by my side. ‘Learn a lesson,’
said he, ‘from what you have seen. Fame is a folly, not worth the having
when obtained. ‘Felicitas’ is ever ahead, never reached, therefore not
to be looked for. Friendship is an empty name, or convenient cloak which
men put on to enable them to rob with greater facility. No man is
content to see another rise, except when such rising will assist his own
elevation; and the man behind will stab the man in front, if he stands
in his way. Human nature is infantile, childish, weak, passionate and
desperately depraved, and as a rule, they are the greater villains who
assume the most sanctity; they the most selfish who prate loudest of
charity, faith and love. I begin my tutelage by warning, therefore
arming you, against the world and those who constitute it. If you wish
to truly rise, you must first learn to put the world and what it
contains at its proper value. Remember, I who speak am Ettelavar.
Awake!’
“Like the sudden black cloud in eastern seas, there came a darkness
before me; my eyes opened, and fell upon the old clock face. Its hands
told me that it was exactly thirteen minutes since I had marked the hour
on the dial. Since that hour I have had much similar experience, and it
is this that affords ground for the unusual powers in certain respects,
not claimed by, but attributed to me.” ...
Such was the substance of the young man’s narrative, in answer to
questions propounded to him long before the date at which he is
introduced to the reader.
CHAPTER V.
LOVE. EULAMPÉA[2]--THE BEAUTIFUL.
[2] Romaic--Ευλαμπια--Eulampía--Evlambéah. “Bright-shining.”--Lovely,
mystically beautiful.
The golden sun was setting, and day was sinking beneath his crimson
coverlets in the glowing west. The birds, on thousand green boughs, were
singing the final chorus of the summer opera; the lambs were skipping
homeward in the very excess of joy; while the cattle on the hills lowed
and bellowed forth their thanksgiving to the viewless Lord of Glory. Man
alone seemed unconscious of his duty and the blessings he enjoyed.
Toil-weary farmers were slowly plodding their way supper and bed-ward,
and all nature seemed to be preparing to enjoy her bath of rest. Still
sat the wanderer by the highway side; still fell his tears upon the
grateful soil; and as the journeyers home and tavern-ward passed him by,
many were the remarks they made upon him, careless whether he heard them
or not. Some in cruel, heartless mockery and derision, some few in pity,
and all in something akin to surprise, for men of his appearance were
rarely seen in that neighborhood. At last there came along three
persons, two of whom were unmistakably Indians, and the third, a girl of
such singular complexion, grace, form, and extraordinary facial beauty,
it was extremely difficult to ethnologically define what she was. This
girl was about fourteen; the boy who accompanied her and the grey-haired
old Indian by her side, was apparently about twelve years old. This last
was the first to notice the stranger.
“Oh, Evlambéa,” said he, “see! there’s a man crying, and I’m going to
help him!” The boy spoke in his own vernacular, for he was a full blood
of the Oneida branch of the Mohawks, fearless, honorable, quick,
impulsive, and generous as sunlight itself. To see distress and fly to
its relief was but a single thing for him, and used to be with his
people until improved and “civilized” with bad morals and worse
protection. The Indian was Ki-ah-wah-nah (The Lenient and Brave) chief
of the Stockbridge section of the Mohawks. The girl, Evlambéa, nominally
passed for his grandchild, but such was not the case, for although she
might well be taken for a fourth blood, she really had not a trace of
Indian about her, further than the costume, language, and general
education and habit. Her name was modern Greek, or Romaic, but her
features and complexion no more resembled that of the pretty dwellers on
Prinkipo or the shores of the Bosphorus, than that of the Indians or
Anglo Saxon. Many years previous to that day, this girl, then a child of
three or four months age, had been brought to the chief and left in his
care for a week, by a woman clad in the garb of, and belonging to a
wandering band of gipsies, who, attracted by the universal reputation of
the New World, had left Bohemia and crossed the seas to reap a golden
harvest. This band had held its headquarters for nearly a year on
Cornhill, Utica, whence they had deployed about the country in a circle
whose radius averaged one hundred and twenty miles. The woman never came
back to claim the child, for the members of the band suddenly decamped
after having financiered a gullible old farmer out of several thousands
of dollars in gold, which they had persuaded him it was necessary that
he should put in a bag and bury in the ground at a certain hour of a
certain night, in order to the speedy discovery of a large mine of
diamonds that was certainly upon his farm, and would as surely be
brought to light when the gold was exhumed after a certain time, which
time was quite long enough for the band to dig up the gold and disperse
in all directions, to meet again three thousand miles away. This bit of
Cornhill swindling was considered rather sharp practice, even for that
locality, and ended by shrouding the girl in an impenetrable mystery,
and giving to the old chief a child, who, as she expanded and grew up
became quite as dear to his heart as any one of his own offspring; and
in fact, by reason of her superior intelligence, she became far more so,
for mind ever makes itself felt and admired. Not one of the
ethnological, physical, moral, or mental characteristics which mark the
Romany tribes was to be noticed in this girl, and wise people concluded
that she had somewhere been stolen by the woman, who from fear or policy
had left her to her fate and the good old Indian’s care.
Esthetics is not my _forte_, hence I shall not attempt to describe the
young girl. The name she bore was marked on her clothing in Greek
letters, which were afterwards rendered into English by a professor of a
college whose assistance had been asked by the Indian.
Besides being known far and near as the most beautiful girl of her age,
she was also distinguished as by far the most intelligent. She was
undisputed queen on the Reservation, not by right, but by quiet
usurpation. She looked and acted the born Empress, and her triplicate
sceptre consisted of kindness, intelligence, and that nameless dignity
and presence inherent in truly noble souls.
Such was the bright-shining maiden, who, attracted by the boy’s cry and
actions, now crossed over to the side of young Beverly. Observing his
sorrowful appearance, she placed her soft hand tenderly upon his head,
and said in tones heart-felt and deeply sympathetic, “Man of the heavy
heart, why weep you here? Is your mother just dead?”
The young man raised his head, saw the radiant girl before him, and,
after a moment’s hesitation, during which he shuddered as if at some
painful memory, murmuring, “No; it cannot be possible!--cannot be--in
this part of the world, too! no!” he replied to her, saying, “Girl, I am
lonely, and that is why I weep. I am but a boy, yet the weight of years
of grief rest on and bear me down. To-day is the anniversary of my
mother’s death, and, when it comes, I always pass it in tears and
prayer. Since she went home to heaven, I have had no true friend, and my
lot and life are miserable indeed. Men call themselves my friends, and
prove it by robbing me. Not long ago, there came a man to me--he was
very rich--and said, ‘People tell me that you are very skillful with the
sick. Come; I have a sister whom the physicians say must die. I love
her. You are poor; I am rich. Save her; gold shall be yours.’ I went.
She was beyond the reach of medicine, and it was possible to prolong her
life only in one of two ways--either by the transfusion of blood from my
veins to her own, or by the transfusion of life itself. I was young and
strong, and we resolved to adopt the latter alternative, as being the
only possibly effective one; and for months, during three years, I sat
beside that poor sick girl, and freely let her wasted frame draw its
very life by magnetically sapping my own. Finally, I began to sink with
exhaustion and disease similar to her own, and, to save my life, was
forced to break the magnetic cord, and go to Europe. As soon as it was
severed she sunk into the grave, and then I returned, and received a
considerable sum of money in the nature of a loan. This favor was
granted me as a reward for my pains, time, and ruined health. I was to
return it from the proceeds of a business to be immediately established.
At that time I resolved to purchase a little home for those who depended
on my efforts for the bread they ate, and so wrote to a man who called
himself my friend, but who is the direct cause of most of the evil I
have for ten years experienced. This fellow pretended to deal in lands.
I put nine hundred dollars--half I had in the world--in this man’s
hands, to purchase a fine little place of a few acres, which place he
took me to see. I was pleased with it, and saw a home for those who
would be left behind me when I was dead. A few days thereafter this
ghoul came to me again, and represented that gold bullion being down he
could make considerable profit for me in three days, would I make the
investment. I handed over the remainder of my money. The three days
lengthened into years. Instead of being a capitalist he was a
bankrupt--was not in the gold business, and had no more control of the
land he showed me than he had of Victoria’s crown. Meantime, my
furniture was seized; I lost my name with the friend who advanced the
sum; I became ill, and, in my agony, called this man a swindler. To
silence me, he gave me a check on a bank. I presented it. ‘No funds!’
And yet he dared call himself an honest man. ‘You have but to unsay the
harsh things said about me,’ said this semblance of a man to me one day,
‘and I am ready to pay you everything I owe.’ My mind was unsettled; I
listened to him, and the result was that, by duplicity and fraud, more
mean and despicable than the first, if there be a depth of villainy more
profound, he obtained my signature to an acknowledgment that the money
of which he had openly swindled me, then in his hands, was ‘a friendly
loan.’ And then he laughed, ‘Ha! ha!’ and he laughed, ‘Ho! ho!’ at me
and my misery, and actually suffered a child in our family to perish and
wretchedly die for the want of food and medicine. But then he told me
that he had buried it properly, respectably, up there in the cemetery,
and it was the only truth I ever heard from his lips. But then he sent
the funeral bills for me to pay--all the while laughing at my
misery--while the lordly house he occupied was redeemed from forced
sale with my money, and himself and his feasted luxuriously every day on
what was the price of _my heart’s blood_! Still, they all laughed, ‘Ha!
ha!’ and grew fat on my blood. I still have the memory of a dead child,
up there in the cemetery. Poor starved child! It is no satisfaction to
me to know that this man will die a disgraced pauper, dependent on
charity for bread. Still less is it to realize, as I do, that the
brothel and the gibbet, the gambling hell and massive prisons, are
shadowed in the foreground of his line, and that it will utterly perish
from off the earth in ignominy and horror. I would not have it so, but
fate is fate; and I see, at least, one dangling form of his race
swinging in the air! My prophetic eye beholds----”
As the man uttered these terrible sentences, he shuddered as if
horror-stricken at the impending fate of this wronger of the living and
the dead, and it was clear to the girl that he would have freely averted
the doom, had such a thing been possible.
“Men and cliques,” said he, “have used me for their purposes--have, like
this ghoul, wormed themselves into my confidence, and then, when their
ends were served, have ever abandoned me to wretchedness and misery.
“Rosicrucians, and all other delvers in the mines of mystery, all
dealers with the dead, all whose idiosyncracies are toward the ideal,
the mystic and the sublime, are debtors to nature, and the price they
pay for power is groans, tears, breaking hearts, and a misery that none
but such doomed ones can either appreciate or understand. Compensation
is an inexorable law of being, nor can there, by any possibility, be
any evasion of it. The possession of genius is a certificate of
perpetual suffering.
“You now know why I am sad, O girl of the good heart. I am weak
to-night; to-morrow will bring strength again. But, see! the golden sun
is setting in the west. Alas! I fear that my sun is setting also for a
long, long night of wretchedness.”
“You speak well, man of the sore spirit,” replied the girl. “You speak
well when you say the sun is setting; but you seem to forget that it
will rise again, and shine as brightly as he does to-day! He will shine
even though dark clouds hide him from us; and though you and I may not
behold his glories, some one else will see his face, and feel his
blessed heat. Old men tell us that the darkest hour is just before the
break of day. I bid you take heart. _You may be happy yet!_”
“The precise formula of the Mysterious Brotherhood!--the very words
uttered by the dead mother who bore me! How did this girl obtain it?
When? Where? From whom?”
Beverly started, gazed into the mighty depths of her eye, was about to
ask the questions suggested, but forbore.
“We may all be happy yet,” said she; “for the Great Spirit tells me so!”
And she crossed her hands upon her virgin breast--breast glowing with
immortal fervor and inspiration; and she threw, by a toss of the head,
her long, black sea of hair behind her, and stood revealed the perfect
incarnation of faith and hope, as if her upturned eyes met God’s glance
from Heaven. The old chief and the boy at his side said nothing, but
each instinctively folded his hands in the attitude of confidence and
prayer. The combined effect of all this upon the young man was electric.
The singular incident struck him so forcibly that he rose to his feet,
placed his hand upon the girl’s head, uplifted his eyes and voice to
heaven, and, from the depths of his soul, responded “Amen, and Amen.”
It was at this critical instant that I, the editor of these papers,
chanced to come up to where this scene was being enacted. A few words
sufficed for an introduction, and on that spot begun a friendship
between us all that death himself is powerless to break.
Two hours thereafter, the chief, his son, the girl, the youth, were,
with myself, partaking of a friendly meal at the old man’s house. After
the repast was over, the conversation took a philosophic turn, in which
the chief, who was a really splendid specimen of the cultivated Indian,
took an active and interested part.
Presently the old people took their pipes, the younger ones went to bed,
and Beverly and ’Levambea, as she was almost universally called, walked
out, and sat them down beneath an old sycamore that stretched its giant
limbs like the genius of protection over the cottage. There they talked
gaily enough at first, but presently in a tender and pathetic strain;
and it was clear that there had sprung up between them already something
much warmer than friendship, yet which was not love. When they rose to
enter the house, the last words uttered by the girl--uttered in the
same singularly inspired strain observed on their first meeting--were,
“Yes! I _will_ love you; but not _here_, not _now_, perhaps not on
_this_ earth. Yet I will be your prop, your stay, though deep seas
between us roll. Listen! When I am in danger you will know it, wherever
you may be. When you are in danger you will see me. Forget not what I
say. Ask me no questions. Your fate is a singular one, but not more so
than my own. Good night! Good-bye! We will see each other no more at
present--_it is not permitted_!” And without another word she abruptly
left him, darted into the house, passed up the stairs, and was gone like
a spirit.
Next day, at the solicitation of the chief and others who took an
interest in young Beverly, he consented to go with me to my home, many
leagues from that spot; and, accordingly, in due time we arrived there,
and for several months he was an inmate of my house; and, while under
the shadow of ill health and its consequent sympathetic state, I became
intimate with many of the loftier and profound secrets of the celebrated
Rosicrucian fraternity, with which he was familiar, and which he gave me
liberty to divulge to a certain extent, conditioned that I forbore to
reveal the locality of the lodges of the Dome, or indicate the persons
or names of its chief officers, albeit, no such restriction was exacted
in reference to the lesser temples of the order--covering the first
three degrees in this country--to the acolytes of which the higher
lodges are totally unknown. Oh! how often have I sat beside him, on the
green banks of a creek that ran through my little farm, and raptly
listened to the profoundest wisdom, the most exalted conceptions and
descriptions of the soul, its origin, nature, powers, and its
destinies--listened to metaphysical speculations that fairly racked my
brain to comprehend, and all this from the lips of a man totally
incapable of grappling successfully with the money-griping world of
barter and of trade. Here was the most tremendous contradiction, in one
man, that I had ever known or heard of. One who revelled in mental
luxuries fit for an angel, yet had not forecast enough to foil a common
trickster;--who blindly, and for years, reposed his whole trust in one
whose sole aim was to rob him not only of his little competence, but of
his character as a man--who suffered one near and dear to him to starve,
literally starve to death, and then be buried, at the very moment that
himself and his were luxuriating on the very money for which that man
had bartered health, and almost life itself! Was it not very singular? I
have wondered, time and again, how such things could be, and intensely
so when he has been revealing to me some of the loftier mysteries of the
Order; when talking of Apollonius of Tyanæ, the Platonists, the elder
Pythagoreans; of the Sylphs, Salamanders and Glendoveers; of Cardan, and
Yung-tse-Soh, and the Cabalistic Light; of Hermes Trismegistus, and the
Smaragdine Tables; of sorcery and magic, white and black; of the
Labyrinth, and Divine policy; of the God, and the republic of gods; of
the truths and absurdities of the gold-seeking Hermetists and
pseudo-Rosicrucians; of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius,
and the Alexandrine Clement; of Origen and Macrobius, Josephus and
Philo; of Enoch and the pre-Adamite races; of Dambuk and Cekus, Psellus,
Jamblichus, Plotinus and Porphyrius, Paracelsus, and over seven hundred
other mystical authors.
Said he to me one day, “Do you remember laughing at me when I first
began to talk about the Rosicrucians? and you asserted that, if such a
fraternity existed, it must be composed either of knaves or fools,
laughing heartily when informed that the order ramified extensively on
both sides of the grave, and, on the other shore of time, was known in
its lower degrees as the Royal Order of the Foli, and, towering
infinitely beyond and above that, was the great Order of the Neridii;
and that whoever, actuated by proper motives, joined the fraternity on
this side of the grave, was not only assured of protection, and a vast
amount of essential knowledge imparted to him here, but also of sharing
a lot on the farther side of life, compared to which all other destinies
were insignificant and crude. I repeat this assertion now.”
CHAPTER VI.
NAPOLEON III. AND THE ROSICRUCIANS--AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN AND AN
EXTRAORDINARY THEORY.
Beverly continued his very singular narrative, saying:--“You have
already been informed of the singular doom that hangs over me--that I am
condemned to perpetual transmigrations, unless relieved by a marriage
with a woman in whom not one drop of the blood of Adam circulates--and
even then, the love must be perfect and mutual. Thus my chance is about
as one in three hundred and ninety-six billions against, to a single one
for me. This doom has brought around me, as it did around others before
me, certain beings, powers, influences, and at length I became a
voluntary adept in the Rosicrucian mysteries and brotherhood. How, when,
or where I was found worthy of initiation, of course I am not at liberty
to tell; suffice it that I belong to the Order, and have been--by
renouncing certain things--admitted to the companionship of the living,
the dead, and those who never die; have been admitted to the famous
Derishavi-Laneh, and am familiar with the profoundest secrets of the
Fakie-Deeva Records; and through life have had ever three great
possibilities before me: one of these--I being a neutral soul--is that
of becoming after death a chief of a supreme order, called the Light;
or of its opposite, called the Shadow--to which I am tempted by
invisible, but potent agencies; and the third of which is the one I
dread most--the perpetuation of the doom to wander the earth for ages,
in various bodies, as the result of the curse pronounced by a dying man
ages ago, as you already have been told, unless I be redeemed by a true
marriage with a woman in whom not one drop of the blood of Adam
circulates. I desire to avoid all three if possible, and to share the
lot of other men.
“I have another mysterious thing to relate to you. Doubtless you
recollect that the curse was uttered by the young poet--and that the
mysterious voice heard in the dungeon where he was slain, declared that
thenceforth, until the doom was fully accomplished, this youth during
all his ages should be known as the Stranger. Well, in the course of the
centuries that rolled away, this Stranger became a member of an august
Fraternity in the Heavens, known as the Power of the Light. You know,
also, that I, who was the king, incurred the penalty of wandering till
relieved; and you are also aware that him who was the Vizier was
sentenced to a singular destiny under the name of Dhoula Bel. Well, he
also became an active member of a vast Association in the Spaces, known
as the Power of the Shadow. This is but one half of the mystery, for it
became the object of both Dhoula Bel and the Stranger--who both knew
that in my birth from the woman Flora--years before I underwent my
present incarnation--that I would be in every respect a Neutral man; one
having no tendencies whatever, naturally, to either good or evil, but
only toward ATTAINMENT; and as such neutral man, it became possible to
forego my doom, and to become supreme chief of either of the Orders
named; hence both Dhoula Bel and the Stranger, beside their original,
have the strong additional motive of making me subservient to their
loftier views; and to achieve it, they frequently attend me in visible
and invisible shapes--tempting, nearly ruining, and as often saving me
from dangers worse than death itself--in what way has already been
partly told, and will be hereafter seen.
“In one of my frequent sojourns in Paris, I became acquainted with a few
reputed Rosicrucians, and after sounding their depths, found the water
very shallow, and very muddy--as had been the case with those I met in
London--Bulwer, Jennings, Wilson, Belfedt, Archer, Socher, Corvaja, and
other pretended adepts--like the Hitchcocks, Kings, Scotts, and others
of that ilk, on American soil. At length, there came an invitation from
Baron D----t, for me to attend, and take part in, a Mesmeric Séance. I
attended; and from the reputation I gained on that occasion, but a few
days elapsed ere I was summoned to the Tuilleriés, by command of his
majesty, Napoleon III.,[3] who for thirty-four years had been a True
Rosicrucian, and whom I had before met at the same place, but on a
different errand than the present. What then and there transpired, so
far as myself was an actor, it is not for me to say, further than that
certain experiments in clairvoyance were regarded as very successful,
even for Paris, which is the centre of the Mesmeric world, and where
there are hundreds who will read you a book blindfold; and two--Alexis,
and Adolph Didiér--who will do the same, though the page be inclosed in
the centre of a dozen boxes of metal or wood, one within the other.
[3] This is a fact--as is also the whole succeeding account of what took
place at this extraordinary séance. The anachronism observable is
purposely made.--ED.
“On this occasion I had played and conquered at both chess and écarte,
no word being spoken, the games simultaneous, and the players in three
separate rooms. There was present, also, an Italian gentleman with an
unpronounceable name; a Russian Count Tsovinski, and a Madame Dablin--a
mesmerist and operatic singer. After awhile his majesty asked the
empress, and the general (Pellisier), who afterwards became the Duke de
Malakoff, if they would submit to a trial of mesmerism by either of the
three professors of the art, named. They declined; whereupon the
Emperor, speaking aloud, asked ‘if any of the company were willing to
test, in their own persons, the vaunted powers of his excellency, the
Italian Count?’ whose methods of inducing his magnetic marvels differed
altogether from those usually adopted; inasmuch as he, like Boucicault,
the actor, in his famous play--‘The Phantom’--makes no passes, scarcely
glances for an instant at his subjects, and invariably looks _away_
from, not toward, them. Now, it is a well-known fact that everybody
believes everybody else, save themselves, subject to mesmeric influence,
as is often demonstrated at the weekly séances of the Magnetic Society,
held in the Rue Grenelle St. Honore.
“At the date of this Imperial Séance, spiritualism had not yet made
public pretensions in France, and although the Scotch trickster, Daniel
Hume, had crossed the Atlantic, and was at that time living at Cox’s, in
Jermyn street, Picadilly, London--yet he had not then obtained the
notoriety that subsequently became his, nor had half Europe ran after
those in whose presence tables tipped by heel, toe, and genuine spirit
power. Of course, then, spiritual phenomena, so called, being then under
bann, it could not be, and was not depended on as a means of explaining
what there and then took place.
“‘With great pleasure,’ said the Count, in reply to a request to exhibit
his power. ‘With great pleasure, your majesty,’ and forthwith he turned
and looked straight into a massive mirror that occupied the entire space
between two windows of the saloon. As he spoke it struck me that,
somewhere, at some time, I had met this Italian Rosicrucian, but where,
for the life of me, I could not tell; yet I was certain that I had heard
that voice, and still more certain that I had beheld that strange, sweet
smile.
“The Count’s position before the mirror was such that, supposing his eye
had been a flame, the reflected rays would strike the forehead of one of
the company fairly in the centre. The person upon whom it struck had not
the least suspicion of what was being done. He did not make the
discovery until it was too late, for no sooner did the operator get him
fairly in focus, then he clenched his hands, looked with ten-fold
earnestness at the mirror, muttered to himself a few unintelligible
words, and the gentleman fell to the floor as if his heart had been
perforated by a bullet, or as if he had been struck down with a club. In
an instant all was confusion, everybody thinking it a fit of apoplexy,
except the Emperor, the operator, myself and the Russian.
“Several went to raise him, but before they could do so he sprung to his
feet, began to sing and dance--the truth, at the same time, flashed upon
the company, that the phenomenon was mesmeric--and in another minute to
plead for his life, as if before his judges, with the prison and the axe
before him. The scene was solemn to the last degree.
“Suddenly, and without a word from the Count, the pleading changed to a
musical scena; and although, at other times totally incapable of singing
or playing in the least degree, he performed several difficult pieces in
magnificent style, on the harp and piano, accompanying the performances
vocally, and in a manner that drew involuntary plaudits from every
person present.
“This part of the performance was suddenly terminated; for the sleeping
subject placed himself in the exact spot in which the Italian had stood,
and, like him, gazed steadily at the mirror, and in twenty seconds the
man who stood in the line of reflection fell to the floor, and a lady
who, in going to his assistance, chanced to strike that line, instantly
seized, raised him as easily as if he had been a doll, and with him
commenced a dance unique, wild and perfectly indescribable. It was
infectious, for in less than half a minute seventeen persons, high lords
and stately dames, were wheeling, whirling, leaping, flying about the
room in wilder measures than were ever performed by mad Bachantes. They
had all been magnetized by proxy.
“Astonished beyond measure at this extraordinary display, I retired, the
better to watch the progress of the strange scene, to the opposite side
of the saloon, and leaned carelessly against one of two colossal
Japanese josses that stood there. No person was anywhere near me, and in
my surprise I murmured below my breath: ‘What astonishing power!’ and am
certain that a person standing close at my side could not have discerned
what I said, yet nevertheless the thought was scarcely framed before the
Count turned square upon his heel, advanced straight toward me, smiled
sweetly, strangely, as he did so, and said: ‘All this power is
yours--and much that is still more mysterious--if you but say the word!’
“‘What word?’ asked I, surprised that a man should so readily read my
thought--for it is impossible that he could have heard my exclamation.
“‘That you will voluntarily join the most august fraternity that ever
earth contained! Think of it! We shall meet again.’
“‘When? where?’ I asked hurriedly, for the august company were observing
us, especially the Emperor, who, beneath his heavy brows, was evidently
paying quite as much attention to us as to the wonderful things then
occurring across the room.
“He did not reply directly, but, by a continuation of his breach of
etiquette resumed, saying: ‘By the exercise of the power I possess, and
will impart to you, conditionally; you shall be capable of depriving any
man of speech, and make man, woman or child perfectly subservient to
your _silent_ command, as the people yonder are to mine. There is Jean
Boyard, in this Paris, who merely looks at any small object, and makes
it dance toward him. You shall exceed him fifty-fold! On the Boulevart
du Temple M. Hector produces a full-blown rose from a green bud, in
seven minutes; you shall be able to do it in one.
“‘In the Rue de Bruxelles lives a girl--Julie Vimart--who exceeds Alexis
and all the other sleepers, for she beats you at chess, tells you all
you know, and much that you have forgotten; you shall do all that and
more. In the street _Grand Père_, lives a boy who brings messages from
the living, in their sleep; meets and converses with your friends--when
_they_ slumber, and describes them as perfectly as the sun paint their
portraits in the cameras of Talbot and Dagguerre; you shall have that
power.
“‘In the Rue du Jour, is a _Sage Femme_, who cures all diseases that are
curable, by a simple touch and prayer: you shall have that power greater
than she can ever hope to. It is only necessary to say ‘I will have
these powers!’ and they shall be yours. They all are well worth having.
I learned my secret among the magi of the East--men not half so
civilized as are we of the West; but who, nevertheless, _know_ a great
deal more than the sapient men of Christendom--that is, less of
machinery, politics, and finance; but a great deal more of the human
soul, its nature, its powers, and the methods of their developement.
Instead of being surprised at modern scientific revelations, we of the
True Temple----’ ‘_What_ Temple?’ I interrupted him to ask. ‘Of the
_Supreme Dome_ of the Rosie Cross,’ said he.
“The Emperor must have heard this question and its answer, for he
directly crossed over to us, and actually joined this curious
_tête-à-tête_. The Count bowed; did not seem at all embarrassed by the
presence of the son of Admiral Verhuiel, the great Dutch founder of the
Second Empire--or Emperor ----.
“‘As I was saying,’ the Count resumed, ‘instead of being elated at what
Western science has done, _we_ are ashamed of the tardy steps of
“Progress”--Progress indeed! Where is it, save in wretchedness, poverty,
crime, selfishness, and in the accrement of misery. Progress is more
fancied than real. Civilization is a misnomer, utilitarianism a
desecration of man’s soul, Philosophy an imposture, and learning
altogether false!’
“I was pleased to see the Emperor join the conversation at this point,
for two reasons: first, to hear what he had to say; and secondly, to
observe whether the subjects on the floor could be kept under the
Count’s influence while his mind was abstracted from them and centered
on matters entirely different.
“‘Do not be disturbed at what he says,’ said his majesty, ‘for these
Mesmerists are all slightly mad.’ And he smiled, while the Count
shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed:
“‘With a method, however!’
“Then turning his attention toward the company, by some inscrutable
power he stopped the dance, restored the subjects to their normal state,
and almost instantly thereafter exercised it upon Madame Dablin, who
straightway, with closed eyes, approached a grand piano, swept its keys
with matchless skill, as a prelude, and then launched forth into one of
the strangest, most brilliant, yet wild and weird fantasias, that genius
ever dreamed of. I cannot now stop to describe its effect upon the
company, nor upon myself, for my whole being was absorbed at that moment
in matters far more important to me than a mesmeric experiment, however
interesting and successful it might be; for at best, its effect and
memory would be transient and ephemeral, while, on the contrary, the
things I might learn from the Italian might last so long as my conscious
soul endured. I was not, therefore, disappointed when he resumed his
talk. I cannot now repeat the _ipsissima verba_ of what he said, but the
substance, in reply to questions by the Emperor and myself, was in
effect this:
“‘The soul and its qualities, passions and volume are all clearly marked
upon the physique, and are apparent to all who possess the proper key;
to all others, the difficulty lies in correctly reading these signs, and
a still greater in assigning to each faculty its actual, its possible,
and its relative strength and value. Every act that a man does has an
effect upon both his body and soul, and the imprints thereof are
indelibly stamped upon his features; therefore his past--even his most
secret act or thought--can be read by the adept with as much ease as if
his face were a printed page, the type being large, smooth and clear.
Every man is susceptible of being controlled mesmerically by another,
because no man is collectively stronger than his weakest faculty; a
chain is no stronger than its most defective link. Now I control men
because I know at a glance which is the most vulnerable portion of their
nature. Self-love, Emulation and Will are the trinity in unity around
which the Psychal Republic revolves. One of these is always vulnerable;
subdue that, and you subdue the man. Now, when I perform such
experiments as those now being exhibited, I first mesmerize, not the
entire brain, but a single faculty, which in turn speedily subdues all
the rest. The mind of man is a mirror! Conceded. Well, then, I
forthwith, by an effort of will, entirely vacate my own mind, thinking
of nothing but a revolving wheel. The subject reflects my action; then
in fancy I sing, dance, play, and the subject reflects my thought by
appropriate action.’
“‘But,’ said one, ‘suppose your subject understands nothing about these
accomplishments. How then?’
“‘All souls understand them. Bodies may not; and I bring the soul under
subjection, not the body merely.’
“‘This is a dangerous power to possess,’ said the Emperor, ‘and none but
a good man ought to have it.’
“‘A bad man cannot become a true Rosicrucian, although men have turned
their arms against the race, and the secrets of the fraternity, like all
things else, have been trifled with and abused. Thus it is possible for
an expert to cure a diseased man by the exercise of the power alluded
to. But the rule is dual: it is also possible to kill a healthy man by
the same mysterious means; and indeed it has often been done, especially
by the natives of Africa.
“‘I persuade my soul that you are sick and will die, and if I keep up
the will and wish, nothing is more certain than that both will be
accomplished. Some men naturally possess enormous powers of will, and
are able to project visible images, like those of a phantasmagoria--
images of whatever they choose to fancy--a flower, a hand, arm, or a
human form--and these spectra will be visible to scores of startled
observers, who, in their utter ignorance of the human mind and body, and
their respective and conjoined powers, believe them to be the veritable
ghosts of dead men, and objects produced by them. I learned recently
that in London is at this moment a young Scotchman, named Hume, who
possesses this power to a remarkable degree, and also that of
levitation, and who is coining fame and fortune by pretending that the
psychical phenomenon is really and truly spiritual--which is not the
case. I learned this great secret in the Punjaub, of Naumsavi Chitty,
the chief of the Rosicrucians of India, and the greatest reformer since
Budha.’
“At this point the Emperor asked the Count to exhibit a specimen of his
spectre-producing power, to which the latter assented. First he walked
rapidly several times up and down the saloon, gave directions to lower
the lights, which was done, and then, as before, he stood still
directly in front of the mirror for a minute or two, and then, in a
sharp, cracked tone, repeated thrice the word ‘Look!’ We did so, and as
I live, there flashed the semblance of a thousand chains of vivid
lightning across the face of the mirror, along the floor, over the
ceiling, up and down the walls; now like forks, then as chains of
electric fluid; anon changing to fiery acorns, which gradually formed
themselves into a fiery crown, rose gently, floated over the company for
a few seconds, and then rested in the air about five inches above the
head of Napoleon III.--a crown of fire!
“‘Mind,’ said he, after this splendid proof of his weird ability, ‘I do
not aver that all the phenomena exhibited in these days as spiritual are
produced as I have these; but I do say that not one-tenth part is
attributable to spiritual agencies. That which is indeed spiritual is
not all the product of dead men, but much of it proceeds from the Larvæ
and inhabitants of the spaces between the rolling globes.’
“Then turning to me, he repeated his invitation to become an acolyte of
the Temple; said we should meet again; and shortly thereafter the séance
broke up, and I left the palace, greatly wiser than when I entered it
five hours before.
“Calling a _voiture de remise_, I entered it and rode home to my hotel.
Arrived there, I dismounted beneath the glare of a street lamp, and drew
forth my pocket-book to pay my fare. On opening it, what was my surprise
at finding a letter, closely sealed, within it, directed to myself. I
paid the coachman, hastened to my chamber, and then, eagerly tearing
the envelope, I read the following very singular letter, written in a
female hand, and in the English language:
“‘MONSIEUR,
“‘Remember that you have met one human soul who knows and
_thoroughly_ understands your strange, mysterious and inexplicable
nature--your heaven’s heights, your hell’s depths, your spacic
breadth, your volcanic eruptions, your ocean of god-like calmness,
and all-pervading, all-sustaining, holy stillness and quiet, wherein
the soul in its magnificent grandeur sweeps over all space and all
time, and lives an infinity of lives in its own self-created world!
As such I see and know you. Yet in all this I see still other and a
greater character to arise in your being than now exists there; I see
a character is to arise, if you will allow the grander, diviner
elements of your being, and also the heavenly elements that surround
you, to blend into one united force of harmonic intelligence, that
will mould your _entire self_ into a man such as I cannot now
describe. Two ways, my friend, are now before you. One so grand, so
sublime, that I would (in order to explain it) demand the eloquence
of a Patrick Henry, the strength of a Cæsar, the love of a _greater_
still, the wisdom of a god; the other, not all these combined could
give me power to depict.
“‘In the name of _Him_ and humanity, choose the right.
“‘Such are the feelings of one who knows you.
“‘Listen--be quiet! your time is precious.
“‘Adieu!’
“This was Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, all combined, to me; and it continued
so for a long, long time. It was evidently written by some one who,
while fully aware of one of my weaknesses--a susceptibility to
flattery--yet knew not the man himself. Still, the allusions to my awful
secret were too palpable to admit a doubt that the writer knew far more
than that strange letter said or hinted at. Was it the mysterious Count?
If so, why did he take so great an interest in a stranger? I could not
understand it.
“Of course I thought much of the Italian Count, and ardently longed to
know more of, if I did not join, the mystic Fraternity whereof he was a
member; but to no human being had I ever opened my mind upon the
subject, either in Paris, or Naples, whither I repaired on my way to the
Orient. Indeed, in the latter city the subject lay _perdu_ in the
cellars of my mind, for I sought to banish all care while in Italy, in
order to drink full draughts of music--that balm for fevered souls.
“While there, I one night went to San Carlos to hear the opera of the
‘Barber of Seville,’ and to listen to the glorious strains of Mario,
Grisi and Gassier. I had been charmed out of all my griefs by the
celebrated ‘Music Lesson’ of the latter cantatrice, and as I walked
homeward I hummed its notes as I passed along, and it rung in my ears
long after I had lain down to sleep. With the peculiar caution of
Americans generally, but of Californians especially--whose habits I had
imbibed during my short residence within the Golden Gate--before
retiring I had carefully examined the room, for Italians, especially
Neapolitans, bear watching, to see that all was safe and right. It was
so. Then securely fastening both doors and windows, I was soon drifting
up and down the Dream Sea. Beneath my pillow was my money belt, in which
was about two thousand dollars in gold, which, together with a revolver,
loaded to the muzzle, was the property of my friend T----s.
“In the morning the room was as when I slept; but the charges were drawn
from the pistol, and the gold lay on the table arranged in the form of a
triangle, surmounted by the letter ‘R,’ while, pinned to the bosom of my
sleeping robe, was a note in English, in a bold, clear handwriting, but
in red ink. That note was not there the night before; it could not have
been placed there by human hands! ‘Do not fail,’ it read, ‘to remember
the purpose for which you crossed the seas, for your enterprise concerns
the future ages of the world! It is not yet accomplished. Achieve it. I
will yet serve and save you.--E.’
“I was thunder-struck. Again some mysterious being was crossing my path;
that being whose strange domain lay on either side of Time, and whose
will seemed ever to hedge me about like a wall of fire, so that escape
from the strange destiny that hung over me seemed almost impossible. I
was in despair, for already had grey hairs shown themselves; I felt that
I was growing prematurely old, and that the chances were greatly against
me, a son of Adam, ever wedding with a daughter of Ish.”
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
ABOUT THE ROSICRUCIANS.
It is no part of my (the editor’s) design to recount all the adventures
of Beverly, nor to trace his paths through Egypt, Syria, Turkey, nor
Europe. Suffice it, that I became so interested in his story that I
accompanied him on more than one long journey. Occasionally I would lose
sight of him for months together, but by the strangest seeming accident
we would meet again, now on the top of Ghizeh’s great pyramid, now in
the deserts of Dongola and Nubia; then in a French café, anon in the
columned groves of Karnak and of Thebes. We often parted, and as often
met again; and in the interim I had not failed to investigate certain
grave secrets which he had confided to me. I did not fully believe his
strange doctrines; but I am sure that he did, and therefore he commanded
my sympathy and respect. As previously indicated, on my first
acquaintance with him I was exceedingly sceptical in regard to the
existence, in these days, of the Brotherhood of the Rosie Cross, and
derided his assertions respecting their powers. True I had heard much,
and read more, concerning the celebrated fraternity--an association
that has proved a veritable God-send to scores of paper-stainers in all
parts of the globe where letters reign, as witness Charles Mackay,
Kingsley, Robert Southey, and fifty others, not omitting Bulwer Lytton,
his “Zanoni,” and “Strange Story,” nor Hargrave Jennings and his
“Curious Things” about “Fire” and the “Outside World.”
In my varied travels through Europe and the East, as well as in this, my
native land, I have met with scores, not to say hundreds, who boasted
themselves Rosicrucians; and it is but a little while since there
appeared, in a “spiritual” sheet in Boston, first a learned lecture, by
a female “medium,” on the Rosicrucians, and a long communication,
purporting to come from a deceased adept of the Order, both of which
were quite laughable by reason of the total and utter ignorance
displayed. Probably both of these “enlighteners” had heard or read of
Dr. Everard’s “Compte de Gabalis,” and took that humorous bit of
badinage as the real, simon-pure explanation of Rosicrucianism as,
indeed, was natural, seeing that hundreds have fallen into the same
comical error; for, upon applying the touch-stone to all these pretended
adepts in the secrets, sublime and mighty, of the Order, it is found
that, exceptionless, they are woefully deficient in even the rudiments
of the genuine fraternity; nor have these modern pretenders any more
real claims to the truth than the hordes of fanatics which swarmed all
over Europe an age or two ago, and who brought ineffable disgrace both
upon themselves and the sublime name which they stole.
A good gold coin passes very quietly through the world, but your
counterfeit makes a great noise wherever it may chance to be; so with
the pseudo-Rosicrucians. The latter created a sensation, and then
disappeared, only occasionally jingling their bells to let the world
know that the fools were not all defunct; while the true Brotherhood
went on, and still goes on, quietly performing its mission.
Every student of history is, or ought to be, aware that the pretended
“adepts” in past times laid claim to enormous amounts of the most
wonderful knowledge, but when put to the proof, invariably failed to
substantiate their claims. Such were the men who sought, and, in some
instances, pretended to have succeeded, in accomplishing the composition
of the Philosopher’s Stone and the great Elixir.
Vaughan, in his “Hours with the Mystics,” laughs at the idea that there
ever was really such a society as that of the Brethren of the Rosie
Cross, and alleges that they were but the “Mrs. Harris” of certain
romancers of the past two centuries; in other words, that they are
altogether mistaken who suppose such a society ever had existence. Baron
Fischer, now of San Francisco, declares that there really was such an
order, but that it was composed of Fools, Fanatics, and Moon-struck
Madmen, who in time became the laughing-stock of all Europe. On the
other hand, Lydde, the traveller, asserts positively, in his great work,
“The Asian Mystery,” that he has traced the Order, under one or more of
its names, back into the very night-time of the world’s history. And
Abdul Rahman, the Arabian author, boldly declares that _he_ has proved
the existence of this Brotherhood in ages so remote that Christian and
Jewish history is modern in comparison.
Hein, Hun--Tse-Foh, the Chinese annalist, asserts, that the Order
originated in Tartary thousands of years before the foundation of the
Chinese empire, itself claiming an age of over thirty thousand solar
years! From Tartary it went to Japan, thence to China, thence to Persia,
thence to Arabia, thence to India, and, by stages, to Europe, having
passed through Egypt, Jewry, and Phœnicia on its way down the ages.
So much for Vaughan; now for another “authority.” Under the letter “R,”
in the American Encyclopedia, occurs the word “Rosicrucians,” followed
by--“Members of a society, the existence of which became unexpectedly
known at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its object was
ostensibly the reformation of Church, State, and individuals, but closer
examination showed that the discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone was the
true object of the fully initiated. A certain Christian, Rosenkrauze,
who was said to have lived long among the Brahmins in Egypt, etc., was
pretended to have founded the Order in the fourteenth century; but the
real founder is believed to have been one Andrea, a German scholar, of
the beginning of the sixteenth century, whose object, as is thought, was
to purify Religion, which had been degraded by Scholastic Philosophy.
Others think that he only gave a new character to a society founded
before him by Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim. Krause, the author,
says, that Andrea occupied his time from early youth with the plan of a
secret society for the improvement of mankind. In 1614 he published his
famous “Reformation of the Whole Wide World,” and his “Fama
Fraternitas.” Christian enthusiasts and alchemists considered the
poetical society, partially described in these books, as having a real
existence, and thus Andrea became the author of the later Rosicrucian
fraternities which extended over Europe. After a number of books had
been written on the Rosicrucian system, and the whole exploded, the
interest in it was revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
in consequence of the abolition of the Order of Jesuits, and the story
of their machinations, as well as of the frauds of Cagliostro and other
notorious impostors.”
So much for the wiseacre who wrote this account at so much a line for
the “American Encyclopedia.”
In juxta-position to the above, I quote part of pages 132-3-4 and 5,
_verbatim_, of the autobiography of Heinrich Jung Stilling, late Aulic
Counsellor to the Grand Duke of Baden. London: 1858. James Nisbet,
Berners street. 3d Edition. Says this incomparable man:
“One morning in the spring of 1796, a handsome young man, in a green
silk-plush coat, and otherwise well dressed, came to Stilling’s house at
Ockershaussen. This gentleman introduced himself in such a manner as
betrayed a polished and genteel education. Stilling inquired who he was,
and learnt that he was the remarkable ----. Stilling was astonished at
the visit, and his astonishment was increased by the expectation of
what this extremely enigmatical individual might have to communicate.
After both had sat down, the stranger began by saying that he wished to
consult Stilling relative to a person diseased in the eyes. However, the
real object of his visit pressed him in such a manner that he began to
weep; kissed, first, Stilling’s hand, then his arm, and said: ‘Sir, are
not you the author of the “Nostolgia?”’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘You are, therefore,
one of my secret superiors’ (in the Grand Lodge of the R. C.) Here he
again kissed Stilling’s hand and arm, and wept almost aloud. Stilling
answered: ‘No, dear sir; I am neither your nor any one else’s secret
superior. I am not in any secret connection whatever.’ The stranger
looked at Stilling with a fixed eye, and inward emotion, and replied:
‘Dearest friend, cease to conceal yourself! I _have been long tried_,
and severely enough. I thought you knew me already!’ Stilling: ‘No, Mr.
----, I assure you solemnly that I stand in no secret connection, and in
reality understand nothing of all that you require of me!’
“This speech was too strong and too serious to leave the stranger in
uncertainty. It was now his turn to be astonished and amazed. He
therefore continued: ‘But tell me, then, how is it that you know
anything of the great and venerable connection in the East which you
have so circumstantially described in the “Nostolgia,” and have even
pointed out their rendezvous in Egypt, on Mount Sinai, in the Monastery
of Canobin, and under the Temple at Jerusalem?’ ‘I know nothing of all
this,’ replied Stilling. ‘But these ideas presented themselves in a
very lively manner to my imagination. It was, therefore, mere fable and
fiction.
“‘Pardon me, the matter is the truth and reality as you have described
it. It is astonishing that you have hit it in such a manner--this cannot
have come by chance!’ The gentleman now related the real particulars of
the association in the East. Stilling was amazed and astonished beyond
measure; for he heard remarkable and extraordinary things, which are
not, however, of such a nature as can be made public. I only affirm that
what Stilling learnt from the gentleman had not the most remote
reference to political matters.
“About the same time a certain great prince wrote to Stilling, and asked
him ‘How it was that he knew anything about the association in the East,
for the thing was as he had described it in the “Nostolgia.”’ The answer
was naturally the same as that given verbally to the above-mentioned
stranger. Stilling has experienced several things of this kind, in which
his imagination exactly accorded with the real fact without previously
having the least knowledge or presentiment of it. How it is, and why it
is, God knows. Stilling makes no reflections upon the matter, but lets
it stand upon its own value, and looks upon it as a direction of
Providence, which purposes leading him in a distinguished manner. The
development of the Eastern mystery is, however, a most important matter
to him, because it has relation to the Kingdom of God. Much, indeed,
remains in obscurity; for Stilling afterwards heard from another person
of great consequence, something of an Oriental Alliance which was of a
very different kind. It remains to be developed whether the two are
distinct or identical.”
Thus far Jung Stilling. Quite recently I became aware of the existence
of Rosicrucian Lodges in this country, obtained much information
concerning the Fraternity, and have been privileged to publish the
following Seven Paragraphs, concerning the exoteric practice of the
Temple:
THE ROSICRUCIANS,
WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE.
_Honor, Manhood, Goodness._
TRY.
I. The Rosicrucians are a body of good men, and true, working under a
Grand Lodge Charter, deriving its power and authority from the Imperial
Dome of the Third Supreme Temple of the Order, and the last (claiming
justly to be the oldest association of men on earth, dating from the
sinking of the New Atlantis Isle, nearly ten thousand years anterior to
the days of Plato), and as a Grand Lodge, having jurisdiction over the
entire continent of North America, and the Islands of the Sea. The Grand
Lodge, and Temple, grant charters and dispensations to found or organize
subsidiary lodges and temples, anywhere within the limits of its
jurisdiction.
II. All Rosicrucians are practical men, who believe in Progress, Law and
Order, and in Self-development. They believe firmly that God helps those
that help themselves; and they consequently adopt as the motto of the
Order, the word TRY, and they believe that this little word of three
letters may become a magnificent bridge over which a man may travel from
Bad to Better, and from Better to Best--from ignorance to knowledge,
from poverty to wealth, and from weakness to power.
III. We constitute a large society in the world, and our ranks bid fair
to largely swell in this land of Practical Men. There are hundreds of
men of large culture, deep intuitions and liberal minds, who actually
languish because they do not know each other--there being no organized
body, save our own, which invites such men to join its ranks and find
the fellowship which such men of such minds need. In our Lodges such men
find all they seek, and more; in our weekly reunions the rarest and best
intellects are brought in contact, the best thoughts are elicited, and
the truest human pleasure experienced; forasmuch, as nothing impure,
ignoble, mean or unmanly, is for an instant tolerated under any
circumstance whatever; while, on the contrary, every inducement is held
out to encourage all that is noble, good, true, beautiful, charitable
and manly--and that, too, in a way totally unknown and unpractised in
any other order, or association of men.
IV. Every Rosicrucian is known, and is the sworn brother of every other
Rosicrucian the wide world over, and as such is bound to render all
possible aid and comfort (except when such aid would sanction crime or
wrong doing, or interfere with the demands of public justice, social
order, decency, sound morals or National prosperity and unity). In all
things else, every Rosicrucian is bound to help another, so long as he
can do it with a clear conscience, and not violate his honor, derogate
from his personal dignity, or sully his own manhood. In all things
worthy, one assists the other; in sickness, sorrow, life, death, and the
troubles and trials of the world and society. Each man is eligible to
one, two, or three degrees; and after once becoming a true Rosicrucian,
it is next to impossible that he can ever afterward come to want, either
for protection in all that is just, counsel in difficulty, food,
raiment, shelter, and all true human sympathy;--all of which is freely
rendered so long as the man remains a worthy DWELLER IN THE TEMPLE!
Thus the Temple ensures its acolytes against want, mitigates their
sorrow, enhances their usefulness to themselves and the world, braces
and sharpens their intellects, fires their emulation, encourages all
manly effort, assuages their grief, cultivates their hope, strengthens
their self-reliance, self-respect, self-effort; it frowns on all wrong
doing, seeks to elevate man in his own esteem, teaches due and loyal
respect to woman, the laws, society and the world; it promotes stability
of character, makes its votaries strive for MANHOOD in the full, true
sense; adopts “Try” and “Excelsior” as living, practical mottoes; and
thus, both directly and indirectly, does the Temple of Rosicrucia seek
to increase the sum total of human happiness in the world, within and
without its walls.
V. Every man pays an initiation fee, and a monthly tax of one dollar.
In return for which, the member has the advantage of all information the
Lodge may be able to procure in the shape of lectures, debates, books,
scientific papers, models, experiments in all the physical sciences,
essays on philosophy, etc.; in addition to which he is allowed a sum,
varying from four to fourteen dollars a week when sick, provided he
needs such aid; he is visited, comforted, nursed, doctored, and, should
he die, the Temple buries him--as a man and a Rosicrucian should be
buried. If he dies an officer (and every man is eligible), his widow and
children are properly cared for by the Order.[4]
[4] The Grand Lodge contemplates the enactment of laws looking to the
providing for the families of members when sick, and to their burial
when dead, which will be secured by the payment of additional fees from
time to time. It also contemplates a system of life insurance of its
members, who, by the payment of certain fees, may secure a certain sum
to their families at death sufficient to maintain them in comfort, but
not in luxury or idleness. The system will probably be one of graduated
annuities.
VI. This Order is a school of the highest and best knowledge the earth
affords. It is unlike any and all others, for, in addition to being a
Mutual Protection Society, it reaches out in far higher and nobler
aims--only a few, very few, of which are alluded to in this hand-book,
which is merely printed to save much explanatory talk on the part of
Rosicrucians who are being continually importuned for information
respecting the said Order. One of its main objects is to be a School of
Men; to make men more useful by rendering them stronger, more knowing,
therefore wiser--therefore happier. As Rosicrucians we recognize the
immense value of Sympathy, Encouragement, Emulation and Persistency--
_Nil mortalibus, ardum est._
THERE IS NO DIFFICULTY TO HIM WHO TRULY WILLS!
Whatever of good or great man has ever done, may still be accomplished
by you and I, my brother, if we only think so, and set about in right
good earnest, and no mistake. TRY! We proclaim the OMNIPOTENCE OF WILL!
and we declare practically, and by our own achievements demonstrate, the
will of man to be a supreme and all-conquering force when once fairly
brought into play, but this power is only negatively strong when exerted
for merely selfish or personal ends; when or wherever it is called into
action for good ends, nothing can withstand its force. Goodness is
Power; wherefore we take the best of care to cultivate the normal will,
and thus render it a mighty and powerful engine for Positive Good. You
cannot deceive a true Rosicrucian, for he soon learns how to read you
through and through, as if you were a man of glass; and he attains this
power by becoming a Rosicrucian only, nor can it be had through any
other means whatever. The Temple teaches its acolytes how to rebuild
this regal faculty of the human soul--the will; how to strengthen,
purify, expand, and intensify it; and one of the first results
observable after a man has become a true Rosicrucian, is that his vanity
grows smaller by degrees, and beautifully less; for the first thing he
fully realizes is that all he knows would probably make quite a large
book, but that all he does not know would make a book considerably
larger, and he therefore sets himself to learn. Where there’s a will
there’s a way; and after getting rid of self-conceit, the man finds
himself increasing in mental stature by imperceptible gradations, and
finds himself a learned man by a process which he cannot fairly
comprehend, and one which is neither appreciated or known outside of the
Temple.
As a consequence of travelling on this royal road to knowledge, the
Rosicrucian soon learns to despise the weakness of wickedness, not by
reason of any long-faced cant being poured into his ear, but because he
finds out practically that manhood and virtue are safe investments,
while badness or meanness won’t pay. It is the universal testimony of
all who have become true Rosicrucians, that within its symbolic walls
there is a deeply mysterious influence for good pervading its
atmosphere, under which every man of the Order becomes rapidly but
normally individualized and intensified in character, manhood, and
influence.
VII. The doors of our Lodges are never closed against the honest,
honorable or aspiring man; nor can any earthly potentate, no wielder of
an empire’s sceptre, no wearer of a kingly crown, gain admission by
reason of his eminence; for though he be a king, he may not be a MAN, a
title far above all others on the earth--a title nobler than any other
ever earned by mortals! We Rosicrucians are proud of our eminence--and
justly so--for we are a BROTHERHOOD OF MEN! and recognize MANHOOD as the
true kingship; hence we honor that man highest who knows the most, and
puts his knowledge to the highest and noblest uses, not only toward his
brothers, but in any field in the world’s great garden, for are not we
all brethren? Does not the one great God rule over and love us? Even so!
No man can enter our doors by reason of his wealth, for riches, unless
put to manly uses, are detrimental;--bad--positively injurious! No man
can enter our doors by reason of his fame, politics, or religion. The
Order has nothing to do with a man’s politics or religion, and it
matters not what a man’s creed is, so long as he IS A MAN. The Baptist
is welcome, but not _as_ a Baptist; and so with men of all other faiths.
No religion, no faith, no politics can be discussed from our platform,
nor will their introduction be tolerated one moment. We accept men of
all creeds, except such as outrage decency, manhood, sound morals, and
public order, such as Free Lovers, Mormons, and birds of that feather;
nor can any such person enter our ranks, no matter who he may be, or how
high in fame or social place. No man is barred out of our Temple by
reason of his poverty, for physical beggars are often kings in mind. All
we ask or seek for in a man is HONOR, HONESTY, and ambition to KNOW MORE
AND BE BETTER.
Usually the Lodges of Rosicrucia meet once a week to hear lectures,
exchange courtesies, thoughts, news; to listen to invited guests, debate
questions in art, science, and philosophy; to mutually inform and
strengthen each other; to investigate any and all subjects of a proper
nature, and to cultivate that manly spirit and chivalric bearing which
so well entitles their possessor to be called A MAN. These are a few of
the good things of Rosicrucia. We seek no man--men seek us. Our
facilities for obtaining knowledge and information on all subjects are,
as may well be conceived, unsurpassed--unequalled. Financially we are
satisfied. A Temple of Rosicrucia never yet felt the pressure of an
exhausted exchequer, and probably never will. But this last is the least
commendable thing about the Institution; yet it uses money for good
purposes, and therefore has its chest supplied. All other essential
information respecting the Order can be obtained BY TRYING!
. . . . .
It will be seen that there is nothing magical here, yet I do not doubt
but the members could tell strange stories if they chose.
Many, but by no means all, the Alchemists and Hermetic Philosophers were
acolytes of that vast secret Brotherhood, which has thrived from the
earliest ages, and, under different names in different lands, has
performed, is still performing its mission. The members of this mystic
union were the Magi of old, who flourished in Chaldea (Mesopotamia) ages
before one of their number (Heber) left his native plains, and on
foreign soil founded the Hebraic confederation. They were the original
Sabi and Sabeans, who for long ages preceded the Sages of Chaldea. They
were the men who founded that Semitic civilization, the faint shade of
which we find, having leaped long avenues of centuries, in the mouldy
records of early China, itself numbering its years by the thousand. Of
this great Brotherhood sprung Brahma, Buddha, La-otze, Zoroaster, Plato,
the Gnostics, the Essenes, and therefore Christ himself--who was an
Essene, and who preached the sacred doctrines of the Mountain of Light.
They were the Dreamers of the ages--the sun of the epochs--eclipsed
occasionally, but anon bursting forth in glory again. They were the men
who first discovered the significance of Fire; and that there was
something deeper than Life in man; profounder than Intellect in the
universe. Whatever of transcendant light now illumes the world, comes
from the torches which they lit at the Fountain whence all light
streameth upon that mystic mountain which they alone had courage and
endurance to climb, and climbed, too, over a ladder whose rungs were
centuries apart. Hermes Trismegistus, Egypt’s mighty king, and that
other Hermes (Asclepius IX.), was an adept, a brother, and a Priest--as
was Malki Zadek before him--that famous Pre-Adamite monarch, that
Melchisedek, who was reputed to have been born of a Thought, and to have
lived for countless ages. And so with the Greek Mercurius. Theirs, too,
was that wondrous learning wherein Moses was skilled; and at their
fountain the Hebrew Joseph drank. Nothing original in Thaumaturgy,
Theology, Philosophy, Psychology, Entology, and Ontology, but they gave
it to the world; and when Philosophers thought they had gained new
thoughts and truths, the records of the Order prove them to have been
old ages before the Adamic era of Chronology, and to have been the
common property of the adepts.
I have been led into these remarks and explanations, first, for the
purpose of finally and authoritatively settling the vexed question
concerning the Rosicrucians, and to throw light on that which is to
follow.
CHAPTER II.
WHO WAS HE?--WHAT WAS IT?
“I made,” said Beverly to me one day, “my projected tour, and had
returned much wiser than I went, but no nearer the consummation of my
chief hope. I had begun the practice of medicine in the city of Boston,
and occupied an office reputed to have been haunted by the troubled
ghosts of sundry persons who were there attracted by some strange
influence. I laughed at, and ridiculed the pretensions of scores of so
called seers, who claimed to behold these flitting gentry.
“There came to my office one day--it was a very stormy day in the latter
part of the winter of the year in the spring of which I was so neatly
swindled--there came, I repeat, on a stormy day, when the snow fell
thick and fast; when the fierce wind blew, and the Frost-king was busily
engaged in putting icy manacles upon all that he could reach--a lady to
consult me upon a case of scrofula in her child. At that time my
reputation in that specialty was great and constantly increasing; for I
had but a few months before introduced and practised the method of
treating that order of diseases, taught me in Constantinople by the
famous negro sage of that metropolis. I prepared the materials required,
and stood waiting for her to leave the office, as I was anxious to
continue the perusal of some Hieratic manuscripts lent me that day by a
lettered friend in Dedham. She made no movement indicative of leaving;
but instead, challenged me to a discussion of some spiritual subject or
other, which challenge I, from an innate horror of all strong-minded
male-feminines, respectfully declined. She called herself my friend, and
was, if sticking to one is a title to the name. She possessed all the
qualities of the best adhesive plaster--it was impossible to get rid of
her presence. She declared that she constantly saw, and held
conversations with the dead, and she would then and there give a proof
of her qualifications in that direction; whereupon she was instantly
seized with an exceedingly violent trembling, accompanied with any
amount of spasmodic jerks and twitchings. I had witnessed such things
before, and consequently did not feel alarmed at Mrs. Graham’s
condition, but going into the rear office I procured a chair and sat
down to wait for demonstrations; which, when they came, were but so many
pretty word-paintings--commonplace counsel and advice addressed to me by
what purported to be my mother--which latter, however, appeared to have
forgotten her name, my own, and when and where she departed this life. I
was perfectly certain that it was not my mother, and equally so that
Mrs. Graham was not consciously acting the part of an impostor, and I
accounted for the phenomenon on the Rosicrucian theory, then quite new
to me, that she was obsessed, or possessed, by and with a distinct
individuality entirely foreign to her own. To my mind the thing was
certain that she, like scores of thousands of others are, was for the
time being under the absolute control and dominion of a Will a myriad
times stronger than that of any living human being that ever tenanted a
body on this terraqueous globe of ours--beings perfectly intelligent,
powerful, invisible, and totally conscienceless, wherein is a great
difference from human beings.
“The lady came around in a few minutes, and I frankly stated my opinion
to her. It was new and startling. ‘Not human spirits--yet intelligent?
An intelligent thing--and guileful? It is dreadful! Horrible! What,
then, is that Thing? Angels? No! Devils? If so, whence come they? Why?
For what end?’
“These were terrible questions; and we talked about the matter, the lady
and I, as we sat in the back office, near the fire, for it was very
cold; and she sat leaning on the desk near the window, and I sat near
the door between the offices, my back nearly touching it. The outer
door, which opened on the stair-landing, was closed, and a wire was so
attached to it that it could not be opened, or even the latch be raised,
without touching a spring that instantly rung a bell that was suspended
directly over my head in the rear office. I used this rear office as a
reading-room and laboratory, and I frequently became so absorbed in my
reading or chemistry, that nothing less than the ringing of that bell
would suffice to divert my attention.
“And there and thus we sat and talked for more than three long hours.
The strong-minded woman’s soul had at last really been aroused; while I
once more brought to the surface my Rosicrucian lore. In thought and
speech we traversed a score of conjectural worlds and labyrinths of
Being; until, at last: ‘Are there, really, any intelligent, but viewless
beings, other than man, in all the broad universe--I mean other than man
as he is here, and disembodied likewise?--that’s the question,’ said the
lady by the desk.
“‘_Of course there are!_ MYRIADS!’ said a clear, manly voice in the
room, right straight from the centre of the triangle formed by the desk,
the door and the southern wall of the office! It was not the lady who
thus replied to her own question! It was not I who spoke; nor, strange
as it afterwards appeared, did the circumstance strike me as being at
all out of the common. And, therefore, without an instant’s hesitation,
I rejoined to the observation of the speaker, whom I subsequently
remember to have observed was a thin, strange-looking, scrawny,
shrivelled little old man, with the queerest possible little sharp grey
eyes. He looked half frozen, and acted so, for he advanced toward some
shelves and proceeded very leisurely to warm his hands over my
laboratory furnace, between the door and wall. The lady appeared no more
surprised than myself at the inexplicable presence of this singular
intruder.
“‘I am not so sure of that,’ I replied, in answer to the words uttered
by the strange old man--‘I am not so sure that there _are_ such beings
in existence.’
“‘Then you’re a greater fool than I took you for! Good evening!’ And he
moved slightly toward the door, against which my chair firmly stood.
“‘Don’t go yet, for I want you to explain,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t you
think he ought to?’ turning to me with a very peculiar earnestness
expressed in her countenance, especially in her eyes--very peculiar eyes
at all times, but lit up in the most extraordinary manner at that
moment. ‘I think he ought to prove his statement, and not leave us in
this state of uncertainty. It is positively cruel!’ And, as she spoke,
her eye met mine, and fastened it as if the encountering glances were
riveted together.
“There must be some magic in the soul that is only flashed forth on very
rare occasions, else why did her glance so fix my gaze for ten seconds
that I could not stir? At the end of that space of time the fascination
ended, and, raising my eyes, I answered--
“‘Certainly! he ought to explain; and, of course,’ said I, turning
toward the man--‘of course, you will explain yourself, and----’
“_There was no man there!_ Not even a sign that he had been. He had
disappeared, gone, utterly vanished--not through the window, for that
was a clear fall of seventy feet to the ground, besides which it had
been securely nailed down for over four months--not through the door,
for my chair and back were against it!
“Mrs. Graham fainted, and fell prone upon the floor!
* * * * *
“I lived in Charlestown, and reached home rather early that evening. Not
that I was frightened. Oh, no! but because home seemed cheerier than the
office; for the weather was bitterly cold, and the storm-spirits were
holding high, tempestuous revels in the common and the bay; and, ever
and anon, as the shivering pedestrian jogged along, and turned the sharp
corners of what is literally and emphatically, and in more senses than
one, the most angular city in the world, the blast would meet him square
in the face, side-ways, and all around him in the same blessed moment of
time, no matter which way he headed; for a Boston snow-storm blows every
way at once--here it is due north, around the corner it is south-east,
behind you it is north-west; over the way it blows straight up, and in
the middle of the street it blows straight down.
“It was hard work travelling the four miles to my home that night, for
every step had to be wearily footed. True, there were street cars, but
no man in Boston ever remembers one going the right way when most it was
wanted; but everybody can find scores _coming_, when everybody is bent
upon _going_.
“Well, after a perilous walk, I at last reached home, and gladly sat
down to my comfortable supper of toast and tea in my snug little
parlor--the same little parlor where I wrote my book and received the
loan of money to publish it, which money I was afterwards deprived of by
the financial acumen of as great a scoundrel as ever went loose upon the
world.
“Oh, how it stormed outside! and oh, how warm and cosy was the little
snug harbor into which I had just moored myself!
“It was the second cup of tea--orange pekoe it was, for I had bought it
of a Chinaman in Boston, who knew all about tea--and the second slice of
toast that I was discussing, along with my daily paper, when suddenly
there came a loud, imperative double knock at the door, similar to that
of an English postman when in a hurry to deliver his letters. The door
was immediately opened by a servant, who thought some one had been taken
suddenly ill, and that I had been sent for professionally. But what was
my astonishment when in stalked, with as much ease and _nonchalance_ as
if he belonged there, no less a personage than the mysterious little old
man of the afternoon. I was thunderstruck. It was the same person who
had treated me so rudely, and who had first come and then gone again so
unaccountably, and who had induced an illness in Mrs. Graham that
resulted in causing her to forever abandon her mediumatic practices--the
same that has sent so many scores of people to premature graves, and
will send thousands more. The strange man advanced toward the fire, and
exclaimed--
“‘What a fright I caused you and your guest this afternoon! Ha! ha! It
was capital--was it not?’
“And again he laughed, but this time in a manner and with a voice which,
had it not been for the immense physical disparity apparent, I could
have sworn was that of the Italian Count in Paris. But this supposition
was hardly possible. The man before me was so decidedly _human_, that,
by a rapid and comprehensive induction, I concluded that Mrs. Graham and
myself had been victimized for sport by one who was perfect master of
the mesmeric art. This hypothesis was quite plausible, only I could not
account for the non-ringing of the office bell; and the idea seemed at
that time quite preposterous that any one could successfully magnetize
the clapper of a bell into silence. I learned more afterwards. Neither
did it seem quite reasonable that this man had, before entering the
office at all, exerted his power upon our sense of hearing, rendering us
deaf.
“To his remark I replied, rather sententiously, with ‘Very!’ and said no
more, for I did not fancy his joke, if such it was, nor his
_brusquerie_, nor his decided lack of good manners, nor his rude speech;
in fact, I did not fancy the man at all, nor anything about him. Not
that he was hated or despised, but because there was a something about
him that made my very flesh creep again, and caused me to instinctively
shrink from his contact.
“It is well known that one of the cardinal points of the Rosicrucian
belief is that bodily life can be prolonged through whole ages in two
different ways; first, by means of the Elixir of Life; secondly, by
means of mere will alone. In the first case beauty and youth accompany
age; but in the second, age is apparent all along the centuries. This
latter secret and the processes were revealed by a degenerate
Rosicrucian in 1605; and all students of medicine are aware that great
capital was made of it in later times by a French physician named
Asgill. This writer undertook to publicly demonstrate and teach the art
of life-prolonging, laying it down positively, that man is literally
immortal, or rather that any given man alive could, if he choose,
utterly laugh at and defy death; that he need not, if so disposed, ever
die, if he used sufficient prudence, and forcibly and constantly exerted
his will in that direction. Asgill used to complain of the _cowardly
practice_ of dying, considering it a mere trick, and unnecessary habit.
The records tell us that several men have used both these means to
perpetuate existence, and I have not the slightest doubt that it has
been attempted and proved measurably successful; and now, on this stormy
night, as I gazed on the withered wreck before me, it struck me that he
was one of those wretches who had attained indefinite length of years by
the second method, and, as a necessary consequence, had lost all fire,
all feeling, all love, and all conscience. I shuddered as the
possibility flashed upon me. He saw the motion, and a smile of ineffable
scorn curled his lip as he did so. I abandoned my notion.
“People who observe things as they plod their way through the world, and
who have at all made the human soul a study, have often been made aware
that there is a certain nameless something that comes over a man, that
with resistless eloquence persuades his inner soul that some danger
approaches, some peril besets, some disaster impends over him. There are
times, when calm reigns all around him, and peace blossoms in his heart,
that he suddenly is apprised that Calamity is flapping her way toward
him through the terrible nebulous gloom of the Future. Many a man and
woman has felt this; and some such feeling, some such horror-form, now
seemed hovering, cowering, crawling near me, and preparing to seize upon
and fang my very soul, in the presence of the queer little man at my
side. It was a mixed feeling of guilt and dread, and yet no guilt was
mine. I had not cheated, robbed, lied, to my best friend. I had not
fared sumptuously every day on the proceeds of villainy; _my_ wife and
daughters did not dress in purple and fine linen, bought with the money
wronged from a poor man, or any man at all. I had not a fine piano, and
parlors full of guests enjoying funds thus gotten; nor had I driven fast
and fine horses of my own, fed and fattened on the money of a man whose
child was at that very moment struggling, gasping, choking in the
clutches of grim death for want of bread and medicine. True, there were
those who did all this--and the corpse of a pretty little girl attests
it--but I did not; why then should I be afraid? There is no answer to
that, and yet I was in dread.
“After saying ‘Very!’ I spoke no more, but striving to repress the
horror creeping over me, I tried to look as indignant as possible, which
he was not slow to observe; for he approached, slapped me familiarly on
the back, poured out and drank a cup of tea and ate a rusk, which
settled the question as to his being no ghost; then he dropped
carelessly into my easy-chair, rubbed his little perked-up nose with his
thin, little, bluish-pale fingers, and throwing himself forward, so as
to look right up into my face, he laughed heartily, and then bawled out,
rather than sung, at the top of his voice:
“‘The storm howls drearily,
Let you and I live cheerily;
And we’ll study things that never were known.
I’ve come from the West,
To see the man that I like best.
Don’t think I’m all depravity--
_I’m_ in search of the centre of gravity--
And _you’ll_ find out the Philosophers’ Stone.’
And then he again burst out into one of the wildest, most _outré_, and
ridiculous laughs that ever fell on mortal hearing.
“The wretched doggerel that I had just heard was beneath my notice; and
little did I know of the singer, and still less did I imagine that those
lines were to me the most important I had ever heard.
“Gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, my prejudices began to wane; I
conversed with him upon a variety of subjects, and the conference was
maintained during four long hours, perhaps more; for if my memory serves
me, it was nearly eleven o’clock when he arose from his seat, shook me
cordially by the hand, said he was going, promised to call again ‘when
he wanted to serve me,’ and then, opening the doors, passed out into the
midst of one of the most fierce and vindictive tempests that ever
desolated the shores of Boston Bay. A singular thing was this: in the
depth of winter, this man, who refused steadily to speak concerning
himself, was clad in the very thinnest summer raiment, not having enough
even for a northern June, much less for such fearful weather as
prevailed on the night of that 4th of February--a night when the glass
in Boston told of cold twenty degrees below zero, and in New Hampshire
nineteen lower still--a night so bitter that many and many a man went to
eternity, borne thither on the frosty pinions of the Ice-king.
“‘After all it is a man, and mesmerism furnishes a key to all this
seeming mystery,’ thought I; and with this consoling supposition I went
to bed, and there reproduced all that he had said or done. Now,
although little was said in regard to himself, yet, from that little, I
gathered that he was an Armenian by birth, that his name was MIAKUS,
which is the ancient Chaldaic for Priest of Fire. He told me this as he
bent down to kiss a sweet little prattling Cora, and said that he was
very fond of children, and felt particularly so toward the little fairy,
who, seated in her chair, was busily engaged in laying down the law to a
culprit kitten, who, it appeared, had been guilty of _leze majeste_ to
her Christmas doll. After the child had been sent to bed, Miakus
produced from his bosom a little square, flat case, apparently of rose
or olive wood, and about seven inches across by two and a half deep.[5]
It was locked, and the key, a silver one, hung by a golden clasp to an
ordinary steel watch-chain round his neck. The little man laid this case
upon the bureau, where it lay undisturbed, although it became clear to
me that his business there was in some way associated with that box and
myself. It was equally clear that his air was more than half assumed,
and that, in spite of his _nonchalance_ and _brusque_ surface, great
trouble reigned beneath; for, occasionally, as he spoke, there was a
melancholy cadence and plaintive modulation in his tones, that, to
practised ears, spoke, if not of a breaking heart, at least of one most
deeply injured and bereaved. This circumstance affected me much, for,
through life, I have been one who grieved with those in grief, and joyed
with those in joy. Then, after a little, he told me that one of his
objects was to initiate me into certain mysteries of white magic, to
teach me how to construct the magic mirror in which the majority of
persons could glance through space, see and talk with the dead, and in
all things, save a few, have an unerring guide through life. Said he--‘I
have such a curious looking-glass in yonder box, and perhaps--and
perhaps not--you may test its qualities before I leave you. The fact is,
I feel down-hearted, have been so all day, and all the more because I
hurt your _amour propré_ by calling you a fool, which, of course, I do
not apologize for. It struck me that I would take advantage of the
weather to chat with you, without infringing upon your business, and
that, possibly, you might learn something and I find relief in teaching
you, and thus withdraw us both for a time from the great Failure’--by
which he meant the world. ‘I am weary of myself, the world, philosophers
and philosophy. There’s nothing good but magic! You have been a fool
while striving to be wise; and are ambitious to _know_ what you have
hitherto merely imagined.’
[5] Both the incidents of the magic mirror are actual, literal facts, as
is also its curious construction and effects as herein related. I have
witnessed many astonishing experiments with mirrors constructed as was
that treated of in the text. I have seen several exactly similar--one in
Zagazik, Lower Egypt, in the hands of a Hindoo magician, two in Cairo,
one in Thebes, two in Constantinople, and one in London. In the East,
owing to the scarcity of the peculiar material wherewith the space
between the glasses is filled, they cost enormous prices, and then can
only be had by a Christian through favor. In this country, or England,
they might cheaply be made. I have one in my possession that I would not
part with for three thousand dollars, so wonderful, so astonishing are
the effects witnessed in and through it.--EDITOR.
“He rose, took the case, laid it on the table between us, and, while
playing with the key, continued--‘If you really desire to pierce through
the gloom that palls the human senses, you must abandon all human loves
and passions, most especially all that relates to woman; for woman’s
love destroys--in the very moment of man’s victory over her, she
triumphs--he yields his life, and offers up existence itself on her
altars, and then she laughs! Is it not so? Does not every man’s
experience corroborate this? Strong as iron alone, no sooner does he
reach the goal of love than he is lost in a sea of weakness, lethargy,
deadness! Bah! avoid woman. You want high knowledge, and must pay high
prices. God gives nothing--he sells all; and he who would have must
purchase, and the price is suffering. So with love. Its life is bought
with the coin of death. Woman is like the ivy vine mantling round some
hoary tower, and the more you are ruined the closer she clings, and the
closer she clings the more you are ruined! Listen. No one acts without a
motive. I have one with regard to yourself, and it is a selfish one. It
so happens that the possessor of the magic mirror can in it behold all
other horoscopes but his own, beyond a certain point; and, if he would
know it, he must consult other seers. Now, there are certain beings in
existence whose future cannot be read except by certain persons
specially constituted. You are one of the latter, I am one of the
former; and such as we only meet at the beginning and the end of epochs
and eras. The present is one of these. I will present you with the
mirror when you have done me this favor; I will teach you the art of
their construction; and I will give you a verbatim copy of the answers
you shall make to the questions I shall ask you while gazing in its
awful depths. To this I pledge a word that never yet was broken, and an
oath that never will be. For this purpose I have followed you for years,
patiently waiting for the hour that dawns at last. To successfully do
the thing I ask, two things are essential. 1st, That, in a perfectly
pure state of body, health, mind, intent, and morals, you gaze into the
glass. 2d, That, while doing so, you make no resistance against certain
sleepful influences that may assail you, which influences will not be
mesmeric, nor assisted by myself in any way, but is the sacred slumber
of _Sialam Boaghiee_, which can only be enjoyed once in a hundred years,
and then only by persons who are singularly constituted as you
are--whose veins are filled with the mingled blood of all the nations
that sprung from the loins of the Edenic protoplast, the Biblical Adam,
and who, temperamentally, and in all other respects, save sex, are
perfectly neutral. Certain great advantages will accrue to you from this
concession that are unattainable without. From this slumber you will
awaken doubly; first, to the old life without; and, second, to another
and a fuller though stranger life within, and to the power of
comprehending innumerable mysteries that lie enshrouded in dim regions
far beyond the ken of ordinary man. Dreamer! you shall comprehend your
dreams. Rosicrucian! you shall comprehend the Light, the Tower, and the
Flame, and where Artefius and Zimati failed you shall find success! It
is difficult, if not impossible, to either over-rate the advantages to
be derived by the possession of the power I allude to, or to define and
characterize it in words, mainly for the reason that, although the idea
stands out well marked and distinct before the mind, yet the language
which you speak has no terms of symbols adequate to its naming or
expression; for, at best, words are coarse raiment for thought, and no
more show the beauty of what they cover, than the preposterous costumes
of Christendom display the superlative glories of the human form. The
soul that sleeps this slumber passes through a gate which even the
privileged dead cannot enter, save once in a century, and then only by
reason of neutrality, for positive people are to be counted by the
billion on either side the grave, negative people outnumber them ten
million to one, while neutrals are, like cold heat, very rare indeed. I
trust we shall yet assist each other.’
“Now, I had, two hours before, on seeing him eat and drink, hastily
abandoned my ghostly hypothesis regarding the little queer old man. But
now, as he talked so strangely, and so grandly indicated the Door of the
Dome of all possible human knowledge and attainment, the mystery that
wrapped him changed its character, but enveloped him in a ten-fold gloom
and shadow, that continually grew more thick and dense, so much so,
indeed, that, but for his eating, and the fact that several persons in
the house beside myself had seen and exchanged speech with and touched
him, I certainly should have doubted the evidence of my senses, and set
the whole thing down, from the scene in the office till his departure,
to the account of a disturbed imagination. There was a something
unearthly about his voice and manner; and once, when he turned his
chair, the upper part of his right thigh came in direct contact with
the red-hot stove, and I watched it there until the chair was ruined by
the fire, and the smoke of its varnish and seat fairly filled the room,
and yet he was not burned, but coolly rose and opened the door for the
smoke to escape, and then resumed his seat as if nothing whatever had
happened; and, two or three times in the course of the evening, I not
only felt a chilly atmosphere proceed from him, but distinctly saw his
skeleton beneath his thin, parchment-like skin, as if but the thinnest
integument had been loosely thrown over it to hide its naked deformity
by some mouldy tenant of the grave, doomed to expiate its offences by
again walking the earth with embodied human beings. Could it be that I
had struck the truth, and that this mysterious Miakus was in reality
such a vampire as we read of in German story?”
CHAPTER III.
PHOSPHORUS AND THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.
“Marvelling,” said Beverly, continuing his wonderful story--“Marvelling
on the strange events of the day and night, as said before, I retired to
my chamber, but not to rest, for ere the morning dawned upon the world
again, there came to me an experience that in some respects totally
changed the current and character of my life. These incidents are
already recorded in my narrative concerning ‘Cynthia and Thotmor,’ long
since given to the world.[6]
[6] See the book called “Dealings with the Dead,” second series.
“On the morning following this eventful night, I repaired to the office
of a reputed to be Philosophic tooth-doctor, whose brain is a far more
curious museum than the one near his office. With him I conversed
awhile, and by him was introduced to a real thinker, whose name, I
think, was Blood. After smoking a segar--_and each other_--in his
laboratory, I repaired to Nichols’, the chemist, made a few purchases,
and forthwith went to my office.
“Now, it so happened that sometime previously I had purchased a chemical
apparatus, conducting my experiments secretly, and mainly after twelve
at night--for the purpose of repeating La Brière’s great experiment for
the removal of the poisonous and igneous properties of Phosphorus
without decreasing its revivifying and medicinal qualities. I had
experimented untiringly for five months, at a cost almost ruinous to me,
but still with an invincible conviction that I should succeed, and give
my secret to the world, instead of perishing like the poor Frenchman,
who burst an artery from excitement at his success, having made about
eleven ounces that fulfilled his entire expectations. Part of his
process only survived him, and many a man, like myself, had attempted to
fathom the secret and gain the enormous fortune that must result from
complete success, but hitherto in vain.
“The experiment was a most important one. Churchill had produced his
hypophosphites, and they had lamentably failed of the intention; hence,
in working at this mine, I had avoided his and others’ formulæ. Success,
I felt, would not only benefit my own private practice, but would be of
incalculable service to the medical profession, and still more to that
large class of persons who by over mental exertion, severe intellectual
and sedentary occupations, and by passional and other imprudent
excesses, had deprived themselves of the wine of life, by draining
themselves of nervous force; and become spiritless, semi-insane, gloomy,
and despondent. Such a discovery I knew would place in the hands of the
profession a true, positive, but perfectly harmless aphrodision nervous
stimulant, invigorant and tonic. It was, therefore, worth all the time,
trouble, and expense I devoted to it, for it would be one of the best
things medical science had yet given to the world.
“It had long been demonstrated: 1st. That Phosphorus abounded in the
bones, nerves, and tissues of the human body, but especially in the
human brain. 2d. That Phosphorus was invariably present in large
quantities in the brains of healthy men who had been killed, and
analysis thereafter made; and invariably as the brain thus analyzed was
that of an intellectual, fine-strung, high-toned, ambitious, executive,
or spiritual person, just in proportion was the volume of phosphorus
found in their remains; while the low, the ignorant, coarse and brutal
had comparatively little phosphorus in them. 3d. It had been proved that
in the administration of phosphorus to old people; to the class of
patients who seek private advice; to those exhausted by mental labor or
excess, it invariably acted as a revivifier, and seemed not only to
restore health, strength, and fire to the body, but to rejuvenate and
tone up the mind to its pristine strength, power, and activity; while
insanity, idiotcy, brain-softening, and causeless terror, disappeared in
the ratio of its exhibition, for one half of the diseases of
civilization result from the waste of phosphorus from the system, and
for thirty years medical chemistry had sought to so prepare the article
that it would at once assimilate with the tissues and fluids. It had not
succeeded. True, La Brière _had_, but then his secret was dead. I
resolved to restore it; and after a hundred failures, produced what he
had named Phymyle.
“I tried its effects upon myself; then several physicians on themselves;
and finally, it was tried upon patients at their own request, and the
result left not a nail to hang a doubt on, that I was perfectly
justified in crying ‘Eureka!’ This preface is essential to the
understanding of what follows.
“Now, it so happened that a few days before I saw Mrs. Graham, that I
had placed about four pounds of phosphorus, together with about five
times that weight of other materials, in a strong glass vessel, in a
sand-bath, ready for the production of, perhaps, one quart of the
precious medicine; and the first thing I did on entering my office from
the dentist’s, was to light the gas beneath it. For a few minutes I
stood watching the rich and beautiful scarlet and purple vapor as it
rose and curled through the neck of the retort, and the long glass pipes
leading to the condensing apparatus.
“While thus intently engaged, I was suddenly startled by the
exclamations, ‘Careless fool! Look out! Run!’ Mechanically I obeyed,
leaped into the outer office, and had scarcely done so, than there
occurred a loud explosion. The retort had burst into a million
fragments, shattering the windows and apparatus into fine pieces, and
scattering some pounds of ignited phosphorus upon the floor. Here was
trouble. But not to the speaker--for, quick as light, he tore the carpet
off the office floor, and hurled it, phosphorus and all, into the
snow-drifts in the yard below, which soon melted under the intense blaze
of that almost quenchless fire, until, having consumed itself, nothing
but a white smoke was left to tell the danger I and the house had been
in.
“The fire out, and my fright subsided, I turned to see who it was that
had so opportunely saved me, and found the little old man smiling and
smirking before me.
“‘What! is it you, then?’ I asked, at the same time cordially extending
my hand toward him.
“‘I rather think it is!’ said he, grasping it, ‘and very lucky for you
it was that I chanced to happen along
“‘So early in the morning,
Just after break of day,’
said and sung the Enigma, continuing: ‘You are not an overwise chemist,
my dear doctor, else you would never expect, either that Phosphorus gas
could reach the condenser, with the stop-cock shut, or that a glass
retort, already cracked, would long resist the immense pressure of the
accumulating and continually heating vapor. I see you have turned
Hermetist and Alchemist--Rosicrucian like! and that you are determined
to blow yourself up, or else
“‘Find out the ’lixir Vitæ,
Or stumble across the Philosophers’ Stone,’
and the little old man clapped his hands and danced about the room in
the most exuberant glee.
“‘But, my friend,’ said he, ‘as constant trying means eventual success,
I have not the slightest doubt but that you will yet become a very rich
man, as well as a long-lived one; for, to tell you the truth, you have
come nearer this morning to compounding the Elixir of Life--that very
Elixir for which Philosophers have toiled during thousands of years, in
vain--than any man that ever lived. For instance: had you placed a less
quantity of phosphorus in the retort; more of the first and third, and
less of the second, fourth, and fifth ingredients, with a slower heat,
and the addition of two ounces of ----, and ----, and one of ----,’
mentioning the articles, ‘you would have, indeed, made the water of
perpetual youth and health--that wonderful chemic which purifies the
juices, removes obstructions, clarifies the fluids, and renders man
physically invulnerable to miasmas and disease--to all things
destructive to life, except, of course, material injury. What d’ye think
of that? Ha! ha!’ and again he burst out in a roaring squeak:
“‘I’ll discover the centre of gravity,
You’ll find out the Philosophers’ stone.’
“It has been the habit of the wiseacres of this world to deride the idea
that it is possible to make gold; to laugh in face of the notorious fact
that nature is constantly making it, and that, too, of gasses in the
earth, as all things else, save souls, are made. It has been fashionable
to laugh at the idea of compounding a material capable of freeing the
system of all its gross and clogging impurities--the only friction to
the wheels of life; a mixture which would exhilarate, purify,
strengthen, and supply to the body the chemical and dynamic forces of
which it is constantly being robbed. But these wise people will have
done laughing by-and-by; not by any means must it be thought that I, for
a moment, entertained the silly notion of the alchemists and false
Rosicrucians--of finding a material which when brought into contact
with metals would change them into gold. We of this century are too
knowing for that; nor that I hoped to discover, from the application of
the old man’s suggestions, that wonderful fluid alluded to awhile since;
but I did believe it possible that I could compound a draught that when
quaffed would repair the waste of nature, and believed until that
moment, that in Phymyle I had found it. What, then, was my astonishment
when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I stood upon the brink
of the grandest success conceivable, that the grand Secret of secrets
was all but in my grasp? To describe my sensations at that moment is
impossible, and the more so because the old man told me the whole
process and constituents.
“What cared I even if it _was_ necessary for me to go to Jerusalem, and
gather the precious seeds of a fruit that grows upon its walls,
wherewith to prepare the water? In other years I did go, and the
treasured seeds are mine.... In that awful moment of success I blessed
the old man and internally vowed that in return I would read his
horoscope, and sleep the sleep of Sialam; for was not the desire of my
soul gratified? Why then should I not return the favor?
“Such, in that tumultuous moment, were my thoughts. Soon I became
calmer, and then, ‘How came the old man to know the materials that were
being used?’ ‘Perhaps he saw the fumes, and thus knew them!’ But how of
the contents of the condensing-chest through which the vapor was forced
for the purpose of nullifying its injurious qualities? for no living
human being had seen me compound or place them there. How came he to
know the purpose for which this compound was being brewed? How had he
become aware of the dream, the hope of my soul, the fixed purpose of my
life during long and wearisome years?
“All these queries served but to envelop their subject in a deeper robe
of mystery; and while they were passing he stood at my side gazing
curiously at the now white vapor, as it writhed and curled upward, and
out upon the air, through the broken panes.
“It was very, very singular!
“In a little while the wreck was cleared; the old man left me, promising
to call again that day, and I went out to order new apparatus, some
glazing, another carpet, and to visit a number of patients; after which
I returned. It was about three o’clock, and I had not been long in
before Miakus, true to his word, came also.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE MAGIC MIRROR.
“‘Let me give you a piece of advice,’ said Miakus, ‘for you need it.
First, never intrust any secret to a friend, which, if revealed, would
bring trouble or disgrace. Never interfere in a brawl or quarrel, no
matter who is right or who wrong; but always let the world do its own
fighting, while you stand by to avail yourself of any advantage that
chance may disclose; and lastly, keep what you know until there shall be
a market for it. Now we will test our magic glass,’ and forthwith we
went into the rear office, which by that time had been refitted, so far
as glass and carpet were concerned.
“In his hands he bore the rose-wood box, which he laid upon the table,
while, by the aid of four gimlets, he fixed a silken screen, or curtain,
entirely across the room, having previously closed the shutters to
exclude every ray of daylight from the apartment.
“‘That,’ said he ‘is a magic screen. You have seen a magic-lantern
exhibition. Well, this is to be a similar one, _without the lantern_. I
now open this box, as you see, and take from it this mirror, which is,
as you observe, merely two plates of French glass, with strips of wood
around their edges to keep them half an inch apart, and so that a fluid
poured between them shall not escape. Nothing depends for success upon
either the box, the curtain, or the glasses, but all depends upon the
peculiar fluid between them, which is, as you perceive, of a dark brown
color, but at a distance, quite inky to the eye.
“‘I now hang this mirror by this hook, to the ring sewed to the upper
central edge of the screen. Then closing and locking both the doors,
thus, I place these two chairs for you and I to sit upon. Then I take
this reflector and place it near the gas jet in such a manner as to
throw a strong light--a perfectly circular and brilliant disk upon the
very centre of the glass tablet, thus,--and he suited his actions to his
words; after which we took our seats before the curtain, and I observed
that the liquid between the glasses was of such a nature as to reflect a
sort of semi-opalescent hue.
“‘Before proceeding to demonstrate the truth of Hamlet’s remark to
Horatio,’ said the experimenter at my side, ‘I find it essential to give
you a why and wherefore. Know, then, that not only is there a mysterious
and powerful sympathy between man’s body and all things outside of it,
but it is still more true that a greater one exists between these
outside things and his soul within, as is proved by the astonishing
power over it exerted by various substances, most of which, especially
the last eight, ought to be banished from the earth and be accursed for
ever--for instance, Belladonna, Cantharadin, Beng, Opium, Hasheesh,
Dewammeskh, Hyndee, Tartooroh, Hab-zafereen, Mah-rubah, Gunjah, and many
other vegetable preparations that might be named, and every one of
which will not merely affect the body, but the tremendous mystery that
lies concealed within it. They expand the soul, but they also damn it!
Let us ascend from gross matter to the volatile--Light, for instance. By
concave mirrors we can throw an image in open space that shall be seen
by thousands. We chain a shadow, and whoever has a photograph possesses
one such prisoner. We make a few passes over a glass of water, and
charge it thus with any specific quality we choose, nauseous or
pleasant, and it produces corresponding effects upon the patient who
takes it. Here you have mind and matter united by an act of mere
volition. But we go still farther: for we select materials, and with
them render the water still more highly sensitive. We then charge it
with our souls, to such an extent that it shall comatize a man’s body,
and illuminate his soul to the sublimest degree of clairvoyance. Still
higher: it is possible to compound a liquid that shall seize on, and for
a time retain, by its subtle power, any mental image thrown upon it.
Still higher: there are direct and positive affinities and co-relations
between every thing and person on this earth and off it. By certain
knowledge, certain persons are able to select those things that possess
certain affinities to and for the inhabitants of the upper worlds, and
the dwellers in the Spaces. Now that glass disk before you contains such
a liquid, thus compounded--’
“Here he gave me the most minute explanations of the process of
constructing such curious mirrors, and how to charge them with a liquid
which I at once saw must of necessity be electrical, magnetic, highly
odyllic and ethereal. Then he told me how to charge it differently for
different uses--as a toy, a means of medical diagnosis, for the purpose
of interpreting dreams, seeing earthly things, discovering lost
treasures, reading the past or the future, and for many other purposes,
as no one mirror would serve more than one end, or work in more than a
single direction, unless specially constructed for such general use,
which would render them too costly.
“‘Properly prepared,’ he continued, ‘your mirror becomes so amazingly
sensitive as to not only receive and retain images of things too subtle
for solar light, but to bring out and render them visible. Nor is this
all. There is light within light, atmosphere within atmosphere, and
intelligent beings who dwell within them, and who can commune with man
only through such mirrors, upon which they can photograph the
information they wish to convey, either by scenes depicted therein, or
by words projected thereon. Now, observe. Thoughts are things--they are
real, substantial actualities, if not actual matter. They are things
that have shadows, shape, form, outline, bulk. Some are flat, others are
sharp, cutting, pointed, and go on boring their way through the world
from age to age. Others are solid, round, bulky, and stagger when they
strike you or impinge upon the world. Thoughts live, die, and grow. Now,
attend. Gaze steadily and firmly; desire to see something, no matter
what.’
“I smiled incredulously, and observed that one could see one’s face in
any bit of glass.
“‘True,’ replied he, ‘but you have never seen your soul; and this
bauble will show you that. It will reveal events already past, that are
now occurring, or that will transpire in the future, on the earth or off
it.’
“Much doubting what he said, I told him that, just then, the sceptical
mood was on me, and my belief must be forced. He well knew the singular
constitution of my mind, and that, in spite of much contrary seeming, I
was one of the most obdurate sceptics concerning the supernatural that
ever lived. To most of those who have known me, or read what I have
written in past years, it may appear strange that I, who have been the
accepted champion of all things spectral, should now make such a seeming
confession. But human nature is a very strange compound! My heart, my
loves, desires, and emotional nature were all on the side of the
ghostly, and eagerly grasped and nursed the occult and weird; and when
these reigned in my soul I bravely defended the spiritual theory against
all comers. I rose to sublime heights of inspiration and speculation,
and being thereby rendered morbidly sensitive to affectional influences,
readily yielded to the specious social sophistry of the hour, and, for a
while, pursued a course from which, had not reason been utterly blinded,
I would have shrunk with ineffable horror; but, being surrounded by
scores of thousands similarly deluded, it was impossible for a while to
break through the accursed meshes of this devil’s net into the clear,
cool light of truth beyond.
“This was one side of the life-web I was weaving. But there came moments
wherein enthusiasm was exchanged for something like sober-mindedness;
and then intellect rejected most of what heart had drank in, and
challenged the conclusions of my own and others’ in regard to the
Phantom-Philosophy. People cried, ‘Inconsistent!’ ‘Variable!’ mistaking
honesty for whim--and just as if anything or person was ever consistent!
“In the present _séance_, logic held the reigns of mind, and I laughed,
which Miakus observing, said: ‘Laugh on, laugh on; but you must be
careful or the laugh will be against you. Truth is a dainty and a
jealous dame, and never relishes practical jokes at her expense. But,
look! the mirror begins to operate.’ And, instantly bending down, he
veiled his face in both his hands, and remained thus for perhaps a
minute, when he spoke, saying, ‘What see you in the glass?’
“‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘but the images of ourselves.’
“‘Have patience! Look again! Try!’
“A short silence then followed, when--
“‘Do you see anything yet?’
“‘Yes; but nothing extraordinary. Only a clear spot--an
atmospheric-looking aperture in the centre of the glass. Yes! now there
comes a change--faint, misty, dusky shadows flit across; but nothing
positive or distinct.’
“‘Is that all?’
“‘It is.’
“‘Look again.’
“‘Clearly and distinctly I see the fore-quarters of a large
greyish-white dog. It grows! Now it is complete! The image stands out,
bold and clear, _from the mirror_!’
“So perfect was this appearance, that I could not realize that it was a
phantasm. The thing was impossible. It looked like the reflection of a
dog in a looking-glass, and I actually turned my head, not to look for
the dog, but for the picture of one upon the wall, that might have
caused the image in the mirror. There was no such picture. The old man
enjoyed my surprise, and muttered--
“‘Nothing supernatural, ha? Remember that idiots, bigots, and fools only
dispute the existence of that which others do, but they do not
understand. True, many pin their faith in a hereafter upon the curious
phenomena attributed to disembodied souls, but they err in so doing. The
demonstration can never be afforded through any process of either
phenomena or intellection. Of that, be assured. Immortality can never be
thought; it must be felt. Your philosopher cannot possibly grasp the
idea, because it is not an idea at all. It is a reality, and comes to
man never through the intellect, but ever and always through other
channels of the spirit--comes over roads that begin on earth and
terminate directly at the foot of God’s throne. Thus, when storms fall
on the philosophic soul it shrinks and plays the coward. Not so the
truly intuitional man. He feels, and, feeling, sees God through the
gloom; and that, to him, is an insurance against loss or annihilation.
He rides triumphant over circumstances that bar themselves effectually
against all philosophers. Even when the shadow rests heaviest on the sky
of life, such a soul beholds God enthroned in auroral splendor
everywhere; he catches the sound of his voice from every echoing hill
and dell, and it speaks to him of life everlasting, and its tones carry
a thrilling demonstration of an hereafter that all the spiritualism of
the earth could never impart.’
“Now while I looked upon the mirror I silently marvelled whether it were
possible, through that glass, to solve the grand secret of the ages, and
the old man’s speech could not possibly have been more apropos than it
was. But in a moment afterward I felt indignant at having beheld such a
figure, when he had promised I should see my soul, and told him so. ‘Let
not that offend you,’ he replied, ‘that figure is not spectral, it is
correspondential. What is the type of enduring fidelity, perfect trust
and confidence, unbounded love and faith, if its symbol be not a dog?
Such is the quality of your soul, nor is it very bad.’
“There now came a broad clean space on the glass, and the whole of it
became clear and pellucid as the finest crystal; and in its very centre
appeared a tiny, but very brilliant speck of white light, and its lustre
increased till it became painful to gaze upon it. Gradually this
expanded, and there came a space in its middle clearer than the
brightest noon-day, into which I gazed with rapture, for the intense
light faded away into a sort of hazy-vapor surrounding this spot.
“‘Into such, and through such do I wish you to look for me. But not now.
The time is not propitious. That which you behold is the lense of a
mystical telescope, wherewith you may scan and sweep the fields where
revolve a myriad worlds like this, and of other millions whereof man is
yet profoundly ignorant. Through it you can and may witness not only
the worlds of which I speak, but also their tenants and all that they
are doing.’
“‘What! Do you mean to tell me that through that telescope, as you call
it, a living man can behold all that is going on in Mars and Jupiter?’
“‘Aye!’ said he, ‘and half a million planets, suns and systems more. It
will reveal the fate or fortune of any one, alive or dead. But to the
proof.’ As he spoke, it seemed that a sort of tube of light extended
itself toward my eyes, and through it I beheld, as in a diorama, each
and all of the terrible and painful scenes of what I believe to be my
most recent life on the earth. I beheld all my few joys and successes,
and all the countless agonies of body and soul, by which they had been
girdled. Men met the phantom of myself, with smiles upon their faces,
and seemed to speak in honied phrases, to make themselves believed, and
then these shadows stabbed at the listener and he fell, but did not seem
to die, for a grisly phantom ever hovered over him, but from pity
forbore to strike.
“The scene changed. It appeared to be a rural village--the date, in
fiery figures on the corner of the field, was 1852. It was a barber’s
shop, and a light, happy-hearted youth was therein pursuing his
avocation, and earning bread and health. This youth was apparently
gifted to look beyond the veil, and into the dim regions of the dead;
and it seemed that this was known, for presently people flocked about
him, and the scene closed.
“Again the magic picture presented this man as in public life; cliques
made use of him, flattered his vanity, and he was led into errors of
conduct and judgment, but none so great as manifested by others around
him; but, on the instant that this man discovered his error, and
announced it, ten thousand daggers were levelled at his heart, ten
thousand tongues defamed him--and for what? Because he had been true to
his knowledge, his conscience and his God. He fell beneath the strokes
of those who had sworn themselves his friends and the friends of all
mankind. See him now with his heart bowed down.
“It shifts; and lo! the man appears again. Consumed by the fires of
hatred, envy, ingratitude and venom of his former friends, he has risen
again. ‘_Je renais de mes cendres_,’ was the motto on the banner that he
floated to the breeze. He changed his mode of life. One of those who
were the very first to take him from his labor, and bring him before the
world, still clung to him, declared that even death should never
alienate him (for the pantomime was as readable as speech), and the
deceiver was believed.
“Again the phantorama changed. The barber-orator had reached to
competence--had gained much gold, a deal of philosophy, and but very
little wisdom with it all, for he still believed the speech of people;
measured men and women by the standard of his own heart, and believed
that honest say was honest mean. He had forgotten that, after all, this
is but a baby world, and still went on in the same old way, trusting and
suffering.
“He had one to provide for--a female relative--in whom his heart was
bound, but this was not reciprocal. The relation was that of religious
duty on his side, and self-interest on hers. Still the man nobly
struggled for her--so it seemed--and the picture faded, but another
came. His ‘_friend_’ by fraud obtained all the man had, and then, with
malignant purpose, defamed the female to his dupe, having first reduced
the man to beggary. All this, working on the barber, nearly upset his
reason, and the victim raged in his agony, and the financier laughed at
him, and fed sumptuously, daily; and, having previously obtained by
double fraud, a signature to the effect that robbery was a legal loan,
gloated over the misery he had caused, and denounced the victim himself
had made. Once more the picture flew on, years had gone by, the despised
man--despised because his skin was darker than his destroyer’s--had
risen into eminence and fame.
“It changed again. _Disgrace, poverty, the prison and the halter had
avenged him._
“‘The way of the world!’ said Miakus, ‘but recollect that
“‘Ever the Right comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done!’
What could you expect else from so small a portion of a man? Trust no
one. This was fate. Fate cannot be evaded. Submit. It will be well in
the sequel. WE MAY BE HAPPY YET!’
“Again those words! and uttered by Miakus, too!
“My mind framed a desire to behold something of the future that should
be as plain as the pictures of the past had been, and if there was any
means whereby the blows of fate might be softened, any field in which to
live and act free from the loneliness hitherto endured, and when next my
eyes glanced through the magic tube, there passed across the field of
vision a solitary human head and bust. So swiftly did it glide past that
only an electric sense of its beauty remained with me, but there was a
something that told me the head I saw was that of Evlambéa--that by
woman alone could redemption come. But then the curse said, ‘A daughter
of Ish,’ and she was a child of Japhet.
“Scarcely had this figure flitted by than the glass became clouded,
black, and finally resumed the appearance it had when first taken from
the box.
“‘Nothing further can be seen to-day,’ said Miakus, ‘I have already
endowed you with priceless gifts. You can go forth to the world and heal
the sick, restore the insane, make mirrors and the Elixir, and read the
past and future, and yet all this is as nothing to that which you may
expect after you shall have solemnly sworn to sleep the sleep of Sialam
for me.’
“Readily acknowledging all he said, gratitude prompted me to assent, and
the words were on my lips, when suddenly the same bust and head passed
before me very slowly, within one foot of my face. It was unmistakably
Evlambéa, and the countenance looked tearfully reproachful as it once
more disappeared; but even as it did so there came a soft, low, musical
voice, but sorrow-toned, saying: ‘_When I am in danger you will know
it, wherever you may be; when you are in danger you will see me, though
seas between our bodies roll!_’ The identical words uttered by the girl
at the door of the chief’s cottage, years agone, when we had so sadly
parted!
“Thus mysteriously warned, my consent was withheld. Miakus looked
pitiful and disappointed. He said nothing, however, but silently
repacked his paraphernalia, said he wished me well, and then, passing
with me into the street, we struck hands and parted.
“It were useless attempting to describe my feelings, consequent upon
these strange events. I could not help being grateful for the favors
shown me by the Enigma, and yet was I certain that I had, by ghostly
aid, triumphed over a great temptation, and that Miakus might, after
all, mean me no good. Involuntarily clinging to the memory of the maiden
of the valley, I blessed her from my soul, and offered up a prayer that,
if it were possible, she might be the redeeming angel for whom my lonely
soul so ardently longed and sighed.”
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
RAVALETTE.
“Years rolled away,” continued Beverly. “I had visited California; had
there made friends, as I had reason to suppose, and knew that I had
foresworn wealth and place in favor of usefulness, poverty and
knowledge; and had there helped to found an institution which, while it
was capable of diffusing infinite blessings to all around, languished
for want of seven good men and true. Yet it, like all other blessings
vouchsafed to man, may be so trodden down that it die; but nothing is
more certain than that it will rise again to the life everlasting.
* * * * *
“Months passed, and a continent and an ocean lay between the Golden Gate
and me. I was on my second journey toward the Orient, and had taken
London and Paris on my way. My objects in the journey were triple:
First, to visit the Supreme Grand Dome of the Rosicrucian Temple; to
make my obeisance to its Grand Master; to study its higher doctrines,
and visit the Brethren. Second, to obtain the materials, in Jerusalem,
for the composition of the Elixir of Life; not that I intended to make
_it_, but because I wanted to use _them_ in my medical practice, which I
purposed to resume on my return to America. And, third, I needed rest,
relaxation, and change of scene; for I felt that if I did not go, what
between the fraud I had suffered, the wretch’s scandal, the woman, the
dead child in the cemetery, and a variety of other troubles, I should
die; and if I died--what then?--And so I went.
* * * * *
“The scene I now present before you is Paris; the date, any day you
choose to imagine between the 16th of August, 1863, and the 11th of
June, 1854. I had just contracted for an anatomical Venus and cabinet,
designed for one of the Rosicrucian Lodges in America, and had paid out
some fourteen hundred dollars thereon, when, being weary, I strolled to
the Batignolles, from there to La Plaissance and Luxembourg, when I met
a person whom I had known in London, and he advised me by all means to
again visit the Emperor, and also to go to certain localities named,
before I left Paris. Promising that the advice should be followed, I
accordingly one day found myself in the Palace of the Louvre, not for
the first time, however, but for, perhaps, the tenth. On each of these
occasions my time had been mainly spent in admiring and examining the
contents of the _Galleries Assyrienne_ and _Egyptienne_. The
bas-reliefs, or coarse engravings rather, had commanded my attention on
previous occasions, along with the sphinxes of Rhampses and Menepthah,
as well as the curious statues of Amenophis, Sevekhatep, Osiris, and
Seti, from all of which I had learned much of that strange civilization
of the long-agone, usually assigned to the past four thousand five
hundred years, but which had in reality utterly perished from off the
earth at least ten thousand years earlier than the first year of that
date! for, but a little while before I saw those statues Mariette had
exhumed from the sands of Egypt, the celebrated sarcophagi and mummy, to
which the best Egyptologers, including the Chevalier Bunsen, had, with
one voice, assigned an age of not less than twelve thousand years.
“On this visit I stood rapt in wonder and conjecture before the
cuneiform inscriptions upon a series of tablets, and which archæology
has never yet interpreted--Bunsen, Layard, Botta, and Champollion having
all alike failed in the attempt.
“During the five or six last visits to the museum, I had observed near
me, apparently engaged in the same work as myself--the attempt to cypher
out the meaning of the inscriptions--an old gentleman, evidently French,
and as evidently belonging to the small remnant of the old _Noblesse_
yet surviving on the soil of _le Grand Nation_, judging from his
carriage, air, and manner--refined, polished, yet simple in the extreme;
and from the benignance that beamed from his countenance, it was clear
that there was happiness and content in his breast, and that he was a
benefactor to, as well as a devoted student of, all that was interesting
concerning mankind.
“On previous occasions when we met there had passed between us merely
the compliments of the day, and those general courtesies due between
well-bred people. This time, however, as if by mutual concession and
attraction, our greeting was much warmer and more prolonged; for, after
saluting, we drew chairs before the tablets and began conversing about
the arrow-headed characters; and the old gentleman, whose name was
Ravalette, said: ‘Sir, how is it that I see you daily here, taking
copies, and trying to decypher letters that the best scholars in Europe
have abandoned in sheer and hopeless despair? Surely a youth like you
cannot hope for success where they have failed?’
“‘True,’ was the reply, ‘_they_ may despair, but is that a reason why
others should? I believe I shall yet correctly read these enigmas of the
ages.’
“The old man smiled at my antiquarian enthusiasm, and merely remarked,
that Meses and the chronologists had better be looking out for their
laurels, else the parvenus of the present day would not leave many to be
gathered.
“‘It is my invincible conviction,’ said I, ‘that these sculptures were
wrought many ages prior to the making of the pottery found beneath the
valley of the Nile; and that the inscriptions on yonder porphyritic
tablets were engraved there a hundred centuries before the date of
Adam--an individual, by the way, whom I certainly regard as having had
an origin and existence in the imaginations of ancient poets, a mere
myth, handed down the night of Time as an heirloom to the ages--at least
all such as had a taste for things they could not comprehend--and had
an existence _there only_!’
“‘Then you do not entertain the belief that all men sprang from only one
source?’
“‘Yes--no. Yes; because God created all. No; because there are at least
ten separate and distinct families of human kind!’
“‘But may not all these differences spring from climate and the diverse
localizations and circumstances attending upon a wide separation of the
constituents of an original family?’
“‘No; because that will not account for different languages, physical
differences, and anatomical diversities. It is utterly impossible for
any sane man to believe that the Jaloff and other Negroes, the Maquaas
and other Indians, the Mongols and other Tartars, the Kanakas and other
Islanders, the European and other Caucasians, all sprang from one pair.
Indeed the thing is so plain, from a merely physical point of view,
without entering at all into the mental and psychical merits of the
case, that he who runs may read. Observe, I have said nothing about
superiority or inferiority, merely content to let Physiology speak for
herself.’
“‘Well,’ said Ravalette, ‘you inform me that you desire to learn, being
already learned to some extent. The views you entertain upon the Past
are, in some sense, consonant with my own; and if you are willing to be
taught, I am willing to instruct; and in any case, no harm can come of
the abrasion of ideas, but perchance much of good.’
“I was delighted to hear Ravalette talk in this manner; for I felt that
he was in some sort, notwithstanding our relative disparity of years, a
congenial spirit, and I longed for him to unfold to me the rich fabric
of his thought and experience. I had concluded, from a word dropped here
and there, that he was at heart a believer in the Faith of Christendom,
but in order to silence the lingering doubt I still entertained on that
point, I put to him the following questions, and attentively noted the
substance of his somewhat curious responses thereto.
“1st. Question. ‘You, Monsieur Ravalette, have doubtless travelled much,
and seen a great deal of this world of ours?’
“Here he interrupted me by saying, ‘_And several others beside!_’ I
asked for an explanation, but he merely waved his hand and motioned me
to go on. I did so. ‘Let me ask you if the result of your observations
abroad, amongst men of different nations and faith-complexions, has not
been a strengthening of your belief in the Mosaic teachings, generally,
and in what is popularly known as Christianity?’
“Answer. ‘No! In the many countries I have visited I found human nature
essentially the same as we find it here in France. Men are ever the same
at heart. Inwardly they are all alike, sincere, beautiful, good, and
religious; outwardly, the same selfish, heedless, careless, and
materialistic beings, as untamable, set, willful, and unreasonable as
the heartiest cynic could wish.
“‘Wherever I went I found the True Religion theoretically believed, but
practically ignored and set aside on the score of inexpediency.
“‘In all my travels I found but one religion, yet that religion passed
current under a vast variety of names. All men alike believed in good
and evil, a Heaven of some sort, and some sort of Hell likewise. I found
that while at bottom Faith was everywhere the same, yet the names by
which that faith was known, differed widely in different places and
latitudes. For instance, I found that the Catholic or Papal, the
Protestant or reformed, the Hindoo and Brahminical, the Boodhistic,
Lamaic, Greek, Polytheistic, Atheistic, Deistic, Magian, Guebre,
Islamic, Fetisch, and all other systems and modes of belief, were,
instead of being antipodal, in fact the same at bottom. This may
surprise you. Doubtless it would, were I to leave the subject just as it
is. But I will explain. They are all one at bottom, inasmuch as that
each and all of their respective and apparently dissimilar devotees do
homage at the same shrine, of the same Great Mystery. The modes and
names differ with latitude, but the _meaning_ and the principle are
everywhere the same.
“‘Popular estimate or opinion can never be a true criterion either of
persons, thoughts, events, principles, or things. We grow daily beyond
our yesterdays, and are ever reaching forth for the morrow. The world
has had a long night, as it has had bright days; and now another morn is
breaking, and we stand in the door of the dawn.
“‘I agree with you that could the dates on the tablets here before us,
be revealed, they would prove that human history really extends much
further back into the night of Time than the period assigned by Moses as
its morning.
“‘Human monuments are in existence that indubitably prove not only that
the world is much older than people give it credit for, but also that
civilizations, arts, sciences, philosophy, and knowledge infinitely
superior in some respects to what exists to-day, have blessed the earth
in by-gone ages, and been swept away, leaving only scattered vestiges of
the wreck behind to inform posterity that such things have been, but are
not.
“‘But what is still stronger food for thought, is the fact that amidst
these ruins of the dead Ages, we find others that are evidently relics
of times and civilizations still more remote--the débris of a
world-wreck remembered only by the seraphim! A demonstration of this
assertion is found in the pyramids, the date and purpose even of the
building of which is wrapped in conjecture, and has been for ages past.
The authentic history of Egypt can be traced for over 6,000 years, yet
even in that remote past the pyramids were as much a mystery as they are
to-day.
“‘This is not all: The catacombs of Eleuthas contain what in these days
would be called “Astronomic diagrams,” showing occultations of certain
stars by certain other stars. This is proved by one diagram showing the
relative place in the still heaven of each star of the series; another
displays an approach toward obscuration, and so on through thirteen
separate stages, the last being a complete emergement of the occulted
star on the opposite side.
“‘Now, it so happens that we have astronomers in our day who pique
themselves on their mental power and mathematical correctness, and these
inform us that a period of 57,879 years must elapse before the same
phenomenon will occur again, and that not less than 19,638 years must
have elapsed since it did occur! Now I foresee an objection in your
mind. “How is it known that the ancient diagrams refer to any two
_particular_ stellar bodies?”
“‘The answer is: From the relative positions of known stars in the
heavens whose places correspond to the positions of stars in the
diagrams, for the _mapping_ out is quite as perfect as it could be done
to-day, even with all the nice appliances of micrometrical science now
extant.[7]
[7] For the fullest and most extremely interesting proof--nay,
demonstration of human antiquity--that Adam was _not_ the first man, but
that men built cities over 50,000 years ago, read “Pre-Adamite Man,” S.
Tousey, N. Y.
“‘Who built Baal-bec? is a question that has been vainly asked for over
3,000 years, and then as now, men repeated “Who?” and echo said
“Baal-bec!” and says “Baal-bec” still.
“‘In a barren, sterile, sandy plain, which the augurs of the artesian
borers proved to have been once a rich and fertile bottom-land or
prairie, a very short distance westward of the Theban ruins, there once
existed a vast and magnificent city, so splendid that the modern
capitals of Europe are mere hutted towns in comparison. This is proved
by what has been exhumed from Earth’s bosom. In that city of palaces is
the wreck of one, which, from its situation with respect to other ruins,
must have been merely a third or fourth-rate edifice in the golden days
when AZNAK flourished; yet the portico of this fourth-rate structure,
situated in a suburb of the city, the name of which suburb was KARNAK,
consisted of 144 Porphyritic columns, 26 feet 6 inches apart. Each one
was 39 feet 5 inches in circumference, and not less than 52 feet high,
and every one was hewn out of a single stone!
“‘Moreover, this fourth-rate palace was two miles, five furlongs, and
eight feet long, by actual measurement of the ruins, and it required a
journey of quite nine miles to go around it.
“‘This palace faced the Sacred River (Nile), from which led a broad
avenue lined with colossal statues on each side, as close as they could
stand, for a distance of over one English league, and every one of these
statues commemorated either a king or a dynasty of that more than regal
country.
“‘Now, mark what I say: Proof, positive proof exists that this palace,
itself so imperial, so grand, so immeasurably superior to aught of the
kind attempted by man in this “Progressive age (?)” was, after all, but
a mere addition, an inconsiderable wing, a sort of appendage, a kind of
out-house to one of the main edifices of that immortal city.
“‘No man knows, or for four thousand years has known, who built
AZNAK--who laid the stones of KARNAK--who cut marble monsters weighing
two hundred and thirteen tons out of a single block of stone, and that
stone so hard that no modern steel will cut, or even scratch it!
“‘Railways! steam power! wheels! pulleys! screws! wedges! inclined
planes! levers, did you say?
“‘Sir, all these things existed long ago, else how could solid obelisks
of five hundred tons weight have been transported a distance exceeding
one thousand one hundred miles, from the mountains where they were hewn,
to the places where they were set up, and where we find them to-day?
“‘Without all the appliances enumerated, how could these monuments, some
of which measure eighty-nine feet in length, have been erected after
they were brought; and take notice, that some of these stone monsters
were placed upon pedestals, themselves ten or twelve feet high?
“‘It would strain the treasury of a modern state to pay the expense
attendant upon the erection of half-a-dozen such--as was proved here in
Paris in the case of the Obelisk of Luxor, the smallest of two that
stood before the Temple of Thebes, and which cost France over two
million dollars to place where it now stands. Without steam power and
railways, how could such immense masses of stone have been transported
over and through vast plains of shifting, burning sands, especially for
such immense distances as it is certain they were brought? A single
further remark on chronology, and I have done. It has been established
among the learned, that it takes not less than a period of ten thousand
years for a language to be perfected, and then die out, to give place to
an improved but entirely different one. Now, observe: Champollion
declares that he, through the assistance of modern Egyptian, was able
to master ancient Egyptian. This furnished a key to certain hieroglyphs;
these latter proved instrumental toward simplifying a series of three
more. He concludes that he has sufficient evidence to establish the
fact, that several successive languages had been spoken in the two
Egypts (Upper and Lower).
“‘But let us return to the original topic of conversation. How is it
that you expect a mere dream will aid you in researches of a nature so
profound as these? How do you suppose that a mere idle dream, even
supposing you to have one on the subject, could furnish you with the
key? There might be fifty persons, or fifty thousand, for that matter,
each one of whom might feel an interest and have a dream about it, and,
like yourself, discover a fancied key, and yet upon comparing notes no
two dreams and no two keys would be found alike amongst the whole fifty
or fifty thousand!’
“Vulgarly, this was a ‘poser;’ still, an answer was expected, and so I
said: ‘Very true, there might; but the true key would be that which,
whenever and wherever it was applied, would yield uniform and concordant
results.’
“This reply appeared satisfactory to the old gentleman, who, after a
little further conversation, invited me to attend him to his residence
and partake of a dinner with him at his own table. ‘’Tis but a short and
pleasant walk,’ said he; ‘my house is situated in the Rue Michel le
Compte, close to the grand Rue du Temple, and we shall reach it in a
very little time.’ Cheerfully accepting the invitation, I took the old
gentleman’s arm, and together we proceeded to his residence--which I
found to be one of those stately old mansions built by the nobless of
the times of Louis le Grande. We entered, and in due time sat down to a
repast at once rich, liberal and friendly, and which gave me a very high
notion of the man who presided over it. Wine of the rarest graced his
board; plate of the richest adorned it; servants most attentive served
it; coffee of the best followed, and tobacco of the finest finished it;
all of which strengthened Ravalette in my esteem. After partaking of his
elegant hospitality, he proposed a walk, and accordingly we withdrew
from the house together, and arm in arm strolled into the Rue du Temple,
and kept that route until we reached the limit of Paris in that
direction, and entered one of its suburbs known as Belleville.
“Before quitting the street where I dined, I had taken the precaution to
mark well the locality of the house, and to note its number on my ivory
tablets, which I invariably carried with me.
“And now we ascended the hills overlooking Paris; and then we descended
to the plain, and gratified the eye in viewing the rich market gardens,
and the conservatories of choice and rare flowers, cultured carefully
for the tri-weekly markets on the esplanade de la Madeleine and the
Château d’Eau. Again ascending the hill, we entered a café together, and
together partook of some frozen coffee and other ices, after which he
took me to see a guinguette--or tea garden--lately established for the
common people, where the customer for ten sous might ape royalty, and
sip his coffee from silver cups, and take his wine from Sèvres
porcelain. Here we both talked to the proprietor concerning the novelty
of his enterprise, and made inquiries as to whether his customers--who
were all of the lower classes of society--did not bear a great deal of
watching, and whether they did not now and then run off with a few
silver spoons, a chased goblet, or a silver-gilt fruit dish?
“‘No,’ replied the man, ‘I have seen enough of life and mankind to
warrant the step, apparently foolish, certainly quite novel, which I
have taken; and I have found out that, treat a man as if you regarded
him a thief, and you do much toward making him one. Watch a man closely,
and you that instant suggest rascally thoughts to him, which may bear
fruit, and that fruit be crime. But place full and free confidence in
those you deal with, and let the fact be known, and your conduct
sanction your words, and take my word for it, your confidence will very
rarely be abused, if at all. My place is the resort of thousands; my
invested capital is large, yet I have never lost ten francs from the
costly experiment of making the poor man realize the comforts and habits
of the rich at the expense of ten sous.’
“We could but admire the tact of Monsieur Popinarde, and frankly told
him so as we left his place, for we felt that there was a rich vein of
truth at the bottom of his philosophy of confidence, as he chose to call
it. After leaving this place, Ravalette and myself, still arm in arm,
pursued our walk in the environs of Belleville, and there, amidst the
sweet music of nature, the melody of the sunshine, the warblings of
birds, the quietude of the deep green canopy of leaves, the humming of
distant sounds, and the serenity of unruffled spirits, we entered upon
the discussion of a topic of singular interest. That topic was, ‘The
human soul, and its resources.’ I shall only record the latter part of
this conversation. Said the old gentleman--
“‘Then you really believe, as did a very ancient society of
philosophers, known to some students of the past as the Sacred
Twenty-four, that there is a kind of natural magic in existence, far
more wonderful in its results than the lamp of Aladdin, or the ring of
the Genii?’
“‘Most certainly I do.’
“‘How have you learned of its existence, and how do you propose to
become a noviciate, and avail yourself thereof for certain contemplated
translations? Perhaps you believe in Elfins, Fairies, Genii and
Magicians?’ said he, half laughingly.
“‘I do not absolutely know,’ I replied, ‘that such a magic exists, yet
firmly believe it does. The idea came to me I know not how. By striving,
perhaps, it may be found. There are steps leading to it, doubtless, and,
if we can discover the first (which I think we have already in
Mesmerism), we can follow till we reach the great goal. I do not believe
that Elfins, Fairies, Genii and Magicians are altogether mythical
personages. There must, it seems to me, be a foundation of truth
underlying the rich and varied accounts of such beings that have filled,
and still do fill the reading world with wonder.’
“‘Very good. But, tell me, have you an idea that such things belong to
this world or the world of spirits?’
“At that instant it seemed as if I lost my self-hood, and that a power
foreign to my soul for a moment seized my organs and answered for me--
“‘_They belong to neither, but to a different world!_’
“Ravalette, at this answer, looked in astonishment; and, after gazing
attentively at me for nearly a minute, muttered, in an almost
indistinguishable tone, the words, ‘It shall be!’ You spoke of Mesmerism
as the first step toward the true magic, which you believe, and I _know_
exists; and you thought it might be made successful use of in the
obtainment of knowledge not to be arrived at by or through ordinary
means, methods or agencies. Tell me in what manner? Surely not through
ordinary clairvoyance, which ever reveals foregone facts, and none
other; and, therefore, can be of little use to the true student? You
believe, as I do myself, that all ancient history, as it comes to us, is
at best a mere fable, or bundle of myths generally, albeit, certain
portions are composed of romance, that is to say, are tales of fiction
founded on a basis of fact, the superstructure being ten thousand times
larger than the foundations would justify, provided things went at their
proper value and importance. How, then, through the mesmeric force, do
you expect to dive beneath this superincumbent ocean of fancy, and fetch
up what few grains of truth yet sparkle at the bottom? Can you answer me
that?’
“Ravalette smiled, gazed sorrowfully at me, and then went on--
“‘Believe me, my excellent young friend, that Mesmerism is a fine thing
for inducing a “superior condition,” enabling one to write books which
send their readers to suicides’ graves; to discover the art of marrying
other people’s spouses; for procuring “Air-line” dispatches, and filling
lunatic asylums with poor reason-bereft creatures; for stultifying a
man’s conscience, and for emboldening one to pass for a philosopher when
one is but an ass!’ and Ravalette smiled gravely. ‘Distrust all mesmeric
railways,’ said he, ‘for many of the passengers, like Andrew Jackson
Davis, after riding on that train for many years, have landed either in
the swamps and mires of fantasy, or on the sides of moonshine mountains,
called “Mornia,” and “Hornia,” “Forlornia,” and “Starnos,” and
“Sternas,” and “Cor,” and “Hor,” and “Bore,” “Gupturion,” and
“Spewrion,” and forty thousand more!’
“I bit my lip with vexation; for I had devoutly believed in and loved
the subject and its advocates. I had always loved Davis, and highly
admired his philosophy and writings, especially since a great free
convention he once held in Central New York. I was aware that he had
foes--people who refused to believe that God had appointed him his
mouthpiece; who pointed to the graveyard in Quincey, Massachusetts,
where lie the bodies of John and Hannah Grieves, surmounted by a stone
that tells that these poor suicides came there, lost, ruined, from
reading his books. I was well aware that there were painful rumors
concerning a couple of divorces, and that some friends of mine had cut
their throats in order to all the quicker reach the ‘Summer-land’ which
he so elegantly described; but still I loved--still love him dearly. But
now, when Ravalette suggested that he was a humbug, it struck me that
Ravalette was right; for I suddenly recollected that once the great
clairvoyant lost a little dog named ‘Dick,’ which his seership could not
trace. I remembered that nineteen-twentieths of his prophecies from the
‘superior condition’ never came to pass, while the twentieth any
school-boy could guess at. I recalled the fact that his philosophy was
most decidedly medical--highly emetic, and very cathartic--and that his
followers soon lost what little common-sense they formerly had, else it
were impossible for them to accept the teachings of one who constantly
contradicted himself. Still, I respected and loved him dearly, albeit
Ravalette had utterly demolished his pretensions; and I saw clearly
that, in believing the stuff he wrote and talked, I was like one who
reads ‘Jack the Giant-killer,’ or ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ or ‘Baron
Munchaussen,’ and believes the stories real and true.”
CHAPTER II.
SOMETHING CURIOUS.
“Ravalette continued: ‘Mesmerism’s day has gone by. Already it is found
to be impossible to produce the same effects with it as were produced a
few years ago, while the bastard thing that now goes by its name, is of
such a nature and character that it speedily either disgusts all
sensible people, or very soon lands its friends into a deep quagmire of
such alkaline properties, that all the little common sense they had at
starting gets thoroughly mixed therewith, and forms a compound which
they carry back, instead of what they brought; and when they get home
again, they peddle it out as “Divine Philosophy,” when in fact it is an
excellent article of soap--regular _savon extraordinaire_, warranted to
extract brains, decency, money, and everything else worth having, from
all who meddle with it--it _washes_ so very clean. If your railway does
not accomplish this, yet in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred of
journeys that terminate differently, it lands its passengers in the
populous Town of Fantasy, in the which all things look real, but are as
hollow and as substanceless as mere Forms can be, and that is next to
nothing. In fact, most of the popular clairvoyance may be said to
resemble an edifice having
“‘Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.’
There are, of course, a few, very few exceptions to the rule, but the
rule obtains vastly.
“‘The sentimentalities of a puling, hysteric girl, half afflicted with
catochus, and the other half love-sick--as most modern clairvoyants
are--count small in the list of Fact-truths, and the mad ravings of
crack-brained somnambules of the other gender go for hardly as much, for
the first has at least a degree of poetry about her, but the latter none
at all. No, no, friend, do not place too great reliance on the ability
of Magnetism to aid your researches, for you will run a narrow chance of
disappointment, and regret when too late that from Nature’s stable you
selected the very worst animal of the lot; one that is ring-boned, lame,
spavined, and very baulky withal. Take my advice, and choose a better.’
“As the old gentleman finished what I at first regarded as a diatribe
against Animal Magnetism--a thing, by the way, that I always doted on--I
_felt_ silent, and was so for the space of a minute, during which time I
rapidly reviewed my entire experience in, and knowledge of, Mesmerism,
and the result of the inspection surprised me not a little, for on a
calm, disinterested view of the whole subject, I found it utterly
impossible to gainsay or invalidate his position and assertions. Yet it
was equally impossible to help feeling chagrined, and in no small
degree mortified to have my pet hobby thus mercilessly cut up and
dissected, laughed at, and thrown out as dog-feed. ’Twas very hard fare,
at least to me, and at first seemed unfair also. For a long time I had
almost worshipped it as a divine science; holding it to be the true
Spiritual Telegraph, by means of which we earthlings might flash
thought, not only to the bounds of the globe and the Present, but also
to the ends of Time and the Ages Past, or nerved by Hope and Curiosity,
dispatch a message to the Great Future and drag back the answer. It was
looked upon as the great Messenger of Light, through whom we might
easily read the records of a Past so distant that the coal-beds are but
yesterday’s creations in comparison. And here, at one fell stroke,
Ravalette had toppled the castle remorselessly about my ears. I bit my
lip with vexation, and for awhile was silent as, together, we walked up
and down a sort of natural esplanade on the sides of the hill next
Paris. Mechanically as we walked back and forth, I trod in the
footprints made while going, on each return, and just as mechanically
observed that Ravalette did the same. One thing struck me as curious,
even while my mind was profoundly engaged in the search for arguments
wherewith to confute and break down the old gentleman’s positions; and
that fact was this: The shoes worn by Ravalette were of a very singular
pattern, totally unlike any I had ever seen before. Upwardly, they were
decidedly triangular--almost perfectly so. Previously this fact had
escaped my notice; now, it struck me as being _very_ singular. But what
was equally surprising was, that instead of the ordinary heel and sole,
his feet-gear had four circular rims of brass, covered with rubber, and
the track he made on the yielding, but plastic ground was indeed
remarkable. The track and the shoe almost upset my cogitations. I looked
up and observed a smile on Ravalette’s face as he saw my surprise at
beholding the novelty of one cross, two crescents and two triangles, and
a solid bar (part of the cross), ornamenting the sole of a shoe, if shoe
it could be called.
“‘That,’ said he, divining my thought, ‘is and yet is not a mere fancy
of mine. I have a peculiar reverence for those figures, as you may
plainly see.’ And with this he drew my attention to an exquisite brooch
or pin in his bosom.
“This rare jewel, which I had previously seen but not noticed
particularly, consisted of a triangle formed of a crescent or quarter
circle and a compass, or, as the instrument is improperly called, a pair
of compasses. In the centre of this was a tiny cross formed of minute
stars, and just where the two bars met was a rose just blooming, and
colored with enamel to the life. Gazing still closer at this novel
breastpin, with the aid of a fine eye-glass, I discovered a legend
engraved in minute and strange characters upon the rim of the crescent;
upon the left quarter of this crescent was a pelican feeding her young
with her heart’s blood; midway was a tiny black rose, and on the right
corner was one of deep crimson.
“The workmanship was exquisite, indeed quite extraordinary, for the
entire jewel was not larger than a golden dollar. He also showed me a
large and massive seal, pendent from his watch, and on its face was
engraved a ladder of twelve steps, the first and fifth of which were
broken. The foot of this ladder rested upon a broken column, near which
lay a mason’s trowel, and its top leaned against the beam and ring of an
anchor, reversed, the lower part being lost in what represented a cloud.
After I had sufficiently admired the seal, he semi-playfully drew forth
his watch, to which it was attached by a fine gold ‘rope’-chain, and
observed: ‘I have more of the same kind,’ at the same time placing it in
my hand.
“The watch was an ordinary smooth-backed, hunting-cased gold
chronometer, worth perhaps fifty or sixty pounds sterling, the extra
value being acquired by an anchor fouled, done in diamond points upon
the internal face. The opposite side presented some excellent
enamel-work representing the cardinal points of the compass. Three stars
gave light from the West; a tomb, with its door partly open, stood in
the East; broken columns adorned the South; and a circle composed of
small triangles was in the North; in the centre of this circle was a
rose on the bars of a dotted cross; the whole executed in the same
exquisite style as that marking the seal and pin.
“To a question as to what it all meant, an evasive answer was returned.
Waiving all my solicitations to explain the emblematic devices, the old
gentleman resumed his remarks, by observing: ‘Never mind now what these
things mean; you will know one of these days. At present let us
continue our talk on other matters. A little while ago you observed
that Mesmerism was a force Spiritual; but I am not so sure that you are
correct. In my view it is a power Physical--ultra physical or material
it may be, but physical still.’
“‘What!’ said I, in amazement, ‘human magnetism, that mighty agent or
power, which effects such grand effects, and works such wonderful
effects, Physical? Impossible! The very idea, excuse me, is absurd; the
assertion is simply ridiculous!’
“‘So I once thought,’ rejoined Ravalette, ‘but think so no longer; and,
mark me, the time is not very distant when you will come to my side of
the question. I will endeavor to illustrate the point, one point of
many, that confirms my view. For instance, the serpent tribe. We know
that those reptiles charm birds and other animals, and that they exert
an influence upon their prey precisely like that exerted by the
magnetizer upon his subject, with this difference, that the human
subject exhibits none of that peculiar terror manifested by the lower
orders of being when under the spell of fascination, and this difference
arises from the fact that the animal has a clear instinct that the power
is exercised for its destruction, which the human subject is, of course,
entirely free from.
“‘We see the snake exert the same marvellous power that the human
magnetizer does, and observe effects resulting therefrom no less
remarkable, and yet no one for an instant supposes that serpents are
spiritual beings.’
“‘Now you are completely at my mercy,’ thought I, as I responded:
‘Certainly the snake is a spiritual being so long as he is alive, and
exerts volition. He is a spiritual thing just as much as you or I.’
“‘And dead?’ said Ravalette, inquiringly, ‘is a mere lump of
clay--nothing more.
“‘Then, Monsieur Beverly, the argument is against you, and is mine _par
un coup majestique_! for the snake charms just as powerfully when his
skin is stuffed with straw and cotton, as when with his own proper
flesh, blood, and bones. Innumerable experiments, instituted expressly
to test this question, have been made, and it has been over and over
again decided that the charming or fascinating power is just as strong
after as previous to death. This has been settled by the actions of
birds, who utter the same plaintive and pathetic cries, exhibit the same
terror and other phenomena, in presence of a stuffed as in that of a
living serpent. This is a strong point in my favor; but one that is
still stronger, indeed quite irrefutable, shall now be adduced. Persons
employed in the _Jardin des Plants_, and other zoological institutions,
find it dangerous work to clean out the dens of certain serpents, even
for weeks after the occupants have been removed, for the
effluvium--which, I take it, you will not claim to be other than
physical--which they have left behind, and which constantly exhales from
the floor and sides of the den, is found to be identical with that aura
or sphere which it is known they exhale when excited by the presence of
prey; and the affects of this emanation from the den are precisely
those that characterize the action of the living, present, excited
snake. Now, these facts had long been noticed, and the results
attributed to the fancy of the human subject, until, at length, an
unusual circumstance led to the institution of a course of experiments
to set the matter at rest forever.
“‘India is the paradise of _charming_ snakes, and a commission was sent
thither by the joint governments of England and France, to test this
matter thoroughly. This commission settled upon Candeish, a province of
the Decan, where serpents most abound, and the experiments were made
simultaneously in the towns of Nunderbar, Sindwa, Dowlea, Chapra,
Jamneer, Maligaum, Chundoor, Kurgoon, Chorwa, Bejagur, Hurdwa,
Asseergurh, Hashungabad, and Boorhumpore; and they were made with thirty
different species of serpents, on eleven hundred and fifty-three human
subjects, of twenty-three different nations, and all sorts of
temperaments. First, these persons were subjected--under proper
precautions, of course--to the mesmeric glance of hungry, quiet, and
enraged serpents. In all three cases the effects were bad, all the
subjects alike complaining of constriction of the chest, loss of memory,
and a very strange sort of vertigo. As soon as the last symptom
manifested itself, the curtain that separated the serpents from the men
was dropped, and proper baths and other restoratives resorted to.
Secondly--these same persons were all invited subsequently to a feast,
as a reward for their services. Serpents were securely fastened in
wooden boxes beneath the seats of three hundred and sixteen of them,
and of these two hundred and eighty-four manifested the same symptoms as
when under the direct gaze of the serpents. Two months afterwards
ninety-four of the same persons, unknown to themselves, were placed to
work in an apartment built of the boards that had composed the serpent
dens, and the effects, a third time, were absolutely identical! Now, in
this light, what becomes of your spiritual hypothesis! It is gone to the
four winds of earth. But to set the matter entirely at rest, and to give
your spiritual notion respecting Mesmerism its eternal quietus, let me
call your attention to the fact that if a man, any man, sits before a
swinging disk of black glass, and fixes his eye upon it, he will
eventually be as deeply magnetized and as lucidly clairvoyant, as he
would under the operation of the most powerful magnetizer on the globe!’
“I felt that the tables were turned, and that the old gentleman held me
at his mercy. However, he forbore to triumph, but went on, saying--
“‘I do not say that the soul of man is physical, but I know that his
spirit is so; for I proved that over sixty years ago, to my complete and
entire satisfaction. Do not, I beg you, consider me a Materialist, or
that I dispute the existence of spirit. Far from that! Your humble
servant is a firm believer, not only in spirit, but in a great Spiritual
Kingdom, more vast, varied, and beautiful than this Material one; and
believe me, _mon ami_, when I affirm that not more than one man in ten
thousand has any adequate idea of what he means when pronouncing the
word Spirit; not one man in thrice that number can properly define it.
“‘Furthermore, _as a prelude to what may yet befall you_, permit me to
say that, in the face of modern philosophy, and in direct contrariety to
popular belief, it is my opinion that spirit cannot produce on spirit
the singular movements and effects witnessed in mesmeric and analogous
phenomena; but I do not at all doubt the ability of matter to effect it
all. Yes, my friend, I believe that matter alone, without extrinsic aid,
is competent to the production of the magnetic wonders, and a hundred
others still more marvellous. For instance, I do not believe that any
merely mesmeric power whatever, much less the dream-force of ordinary
sleep, can, or, under any conceivable circumstances, could enable you to
correctly read the inscriptions on the tablets in the Louvre, or probe
the secrets of Karnak, Baalbec, Nineveh, or Ampyloe; but I can name
purely material agencies that are more than adequate to the
accomplishment of these, and infinitely greater things. I know a
material means that will enable the soul to lay bare before its gaze the
deepest mysteries of the highest antiquity, strip the Past of its mouldy
shroud, and triumphantly lift the veil that conceals the Future from our
view--or rather, your view.’
“The strange old man ceased, and, for a little time, my mind lingered on
his concluding words. It was plain and clear, so I thought, that he
alluded to certain medicaments which have long been used for the
production of a species of ecstatic dream, and so I replied--
“‘You are doubtless correct, and can, by physical agents, produce
strange psychical phenomena, and curious exhibitions of mental activity
and fantasy; but, beyond all question, you over-rate their importance
and power, for not one of them is adequate to the office of enabling a
clear, strong mind to move within the sphere of the Hidden, but the
Real.’
“‘To what do you allude particularly, _mon ami_?’
“‘I allude to various chemical and botanical compounds; for instance,
those plants which furnish a large per centage of the chemical
principles Narcotine, Morphia, and others of the same general
characteristics, as Opium, Beng, and Hemp, the preparations of the
delightful but dangerous ----, the equally fascinating decoctions of
----, not forgetting Hasheesh, that accursed drug, beneath whose sway
millions in the Orient have sunk into untimely but rainbow-tinted
graves, and which, in western lands, has made hundreds of howling
maniacs, and transformed scores of strong men into the most loathly,
drivelling idiots.’
“We lapsed into silence, which at length was broken by Ravalette, who
said, as he clasped my hand with fervor--
“‘My dear young friend, there is here, in Paris, a high and noble
society, whose chief I am. This society has many Rosicrucians among its
members. Like the society to which you belong, ours, also, has its
head-quarters in the Orient. Ever since I have known you, I have been
anxious to have you for a brother of our Order. Shall I direct your
initiation? Once with us, there is no branch of knowledge, mystic or
otherwise, that you will not be able to attain, and, compared to which,
that of even the third temple of Rosicrucia is but as the alphabet to an
encyclopædia.’
“Much more he said, but I had no desire to join his fraternity, and
firmly but respectfully told him so; whereupon he cut short our
conference by rising, as he did so, observing--
“‘You may regret it. I can tell you no more. The society exists; if you
need it, find it--it may be discovered. But see! my groom and horse have
arrived, and have long been waiting. I must, therefore, leave you. Take
this paper; open it when you see proper to do so. You will quit Paris
to-morrow, next day, or when you choose. You may turn your face
southward, instead of to the north as you proposed. Seek me not till in
your hour of greatest need. In the meantime, I counsel you to obey, to
the letter, your _highest_ intuitions. Adieu!’
“And so we parted. I loved Ravalette, but not his fraternity. This
conversation with Ravalette, and, indeed, my entire intercourse with
him, was invested with a peculiar halo of what I may justly call the
weird. It was evident that all his words and allusions contained a
deeper meaning than appeared upon the surface. His conversation had
filled my soul with new and strange ideas and emotions; and I felt that
he had left me at the inner door of a vast edifice, after skillfully
conducting me through the vestibule. What worlds of mystery and meaning
lay just beyond, was a theme of profound and uneasy conjecture. I felt
and knew that he was no common or ordinary man; and well and strangely
was this proved afterwards.
“I had solaced myself with the hope that, by deferring my contemplated
tour through Picardy and La Normandy, I should draw closer the bonds of
common sympathy between us, and be made wiser through the abrasion of
such an intellect as his. How suddenly and how rudely was this hope
shattered!
“When he dismissed me so abruptly, after baiting my soul with such a
splendid lure, I could but feel both astonished and aggrieved. Thousands
would have been too small a price to pay for even one day more of his
society; but, alas! thousands could not purchase it. Still, I learned a
lesson. There are things in this world more valuable than even boundless
material wealth--knowledges, that neither Peru’s treasures nor the mines
of Ind can buy; and that Ravalette possessed an abundant store of these
priceless riches, there was not a single lingering doubt.
“As his last words sounded the death-knell of all my fondly air-built
castles, I became apprised of a fact that had heretofore escaped my
notice; and this was, that, for the last ten minutes, a mounted groom,
having a led horse in hand, had stood patiently waiting under a large
tree at the south-eastern terminus of our promenade. As the old man
placed the sealed paper in my hand, this groom advanced and assisted his
master to mount, and, as soon as he was firmly seated in the saddle,
they both gave rein and spur, and, urging the steeds into a round
gallop, both horsemen were out of sight before I could recover from the
stupor of surprise into which the proceeding had thrown me.”
CHAPTER III.
NOW COMES THE MYSTERY--A MAN GOES IN A CAB IN SEARCH OF HIS OWN GHOST.
“Perhaps three minutes elapsed before a full recovery took place, and,
at the end of that period, I had come to the conclusion not to be
baulked in quite such a cavalier style, but to seek and obtain one more
interview, come what might therefrom. With this intention, I dashed
along the hill-side, and at full speed through the principal
thoroughfare of Belleville, till I reached the barrière leading into the
Rue Faubourg du Temple, where, calling a cabriolet, I ordered the driver
to land me in the Rue Michel le Compte--where, a few hours previously, I
had dined with Ravalette--in the shortest possible space of time.
“A curious thing took place while giving my orders to the driver. It was
this: Everybody knows that, at any of the barrières leading from Paris,
a large crowd of blouses, men and of office, women and children of the
lower orders, may, in fair or foul weather, always be found--loiterers,
having nothing to do, apparently, except to lounge about, to see and be
seen. Such a crowd I found at the barrière, and amidst it I noticed a
_bonné_, or nurse, having in charge three beautiful children, one of
whom, a lad of seven years, appeared to take an unusual interest in
myself, doubtless observing that I was in a great hurry to accomplish
something. This child, as it saw me, ran to the nurse, and said, ‘_Ma
bonné_, Franchette, what’s the matter with the gentleman? Is he sick?
What makes him look so queer?’
“‘Hush, child,’ said the woman in reply; ‘that gentleman is in search of
what he won’t find this long time!’
“‘What is that, Franchette?’
“‘That gentleman is in search of _his own ghost_, _mes enfants_!’
replied the nurse, as the children clustered around her to hear the
answer.
“‘_Ma foi!_’ echoed the crowd of idlers, as they caught the woman’s
words--whether spoken in jest or seriously I cannot say--‘_Ma foi!_ the
gentleman takes a cab to go in search of his own ghost!’ And the cab
drove off as these words were echoed by a hundred tongues.
“‘What the devil does it mean?’ asked I of myself, rather irreverently,
as a Guebre would say, had one heard me. ‘What does it mean?’ What put
such a queer notion as that in the woman’s head?’ And, while cogitating
for an answer, the cab stopped before the required gateway. Hastily
dismounting, I paid the man half a gold louis, refused the offered
change, but, dismissing him with a word of praise at his alacrity, I
hastily rang the bell to summon the concierge or porter. That personage
speedily made his appearance, all the quicker from the unwonted vigor
applied to the bell-rope.
“‘Is your master in the house, _mon ami_?’
“‘_Oui, monsieur_: he has not been absent to-day.’
“‘What! Not been absent, when he left me not thirty minutes ago?
Impossible! Monsieur Ravalette _must_ have been absent.’
“‘But who _is_ Monsieur Ravalette? I know of no such person. Monsieur
Jacques d’Emprat is my master, and not the person you have mentioned!’
“Here was a fresh mystery. ‘Call Monsieur Jacques d’Emprat, if you
please.’
“‘_Certainement, monsieur._ Jeanette, my dear, go upstairs and tell the
patron here’s a gentleman wants to see him.’
“Jeanette, a little girl of twelve years, flew to execute the errand,
and in a few moments the landlord himself appeared; and I was surprised
to find that the well-aproned butler who had attended upon us at dinner
and the proprietor of the house were one and the same person. An
explanation soon followed, and I learned that Ravalette, who was an
entire stranger to the landlord, had come there _two_ days previously
for the purpose of engaging a sumptuous dinner for _two_ persons, that
being the landlord’s business--a caterer. For the dinner he had paid a
round price in advance, and had given the proprietor a small silver coin
of peculiar workmanship as a memorial of his visit. This coin or medal
the man produced, and, lo! it was a perfect fac-simile, on a larger
scale, of the jewel I had that very day examined in the scarf of
Ravalette at Belleville. To my question as to when he last saw my
mysterious friend, the patron answered: ‘I do not know him, where he is,
when I next shall see him--nothing whatever. He left with you, and has
not since returned. He is evidently a mysterious man; and were it not
that I have this little medal to commemorate his visit, together with
three hundred and ten francs in gold in my pocket, which he paid me for
the wines and dinner, I should more than half believe that he was the
Devil himself out for a lark in Paris. But the Devil never pays in gold,
so those say who ought to know, and I am sure Ravalette paid me in bran
new coin, which, on account of its beauty and full weight, I just tied
up in one end of my long leather purse, meaning to give it to my
daughter, at school in Dijon, for a birth-day gift. Here’s the money, as
you perceive, nicely tied up, and sealed with wax, just as I fixed it an
hour or two after Ravalette paid me.’
“With these words the honest landlord drew forth a most
formidable-looking _bourse_, one end of which was, as he said, securely
tied with twine, and sealed with a great blotch of red wax.
“‘Yes, monsieur, here’s the cash; I cannot show it to you, because I
don’t like to break the string or wax; but as a sound is worth as much
as a sight, you shall hear it jingle to your heart’s content.’
“And so saying, he struck the purse against the side of the gateway;
but, instead of the merry clink of gold coin, we heard only the dull
sound of a far less valuable metal. This startled him not a little. He
changed color, then drew his knife, and in an instant cut the string,
and emptied the contents of the purse upon his open palm.
“Horrible! Instead of bright golden Louis, he held in his hand a small
pile of leaden disks? Each one of these disks had a number and a letter
on it, and one of them was engraved, on the obverse side, with the
simple words--‘Place the coins in order.’ We did so, and found that each
letter formed part of a word. When they were all placed, the inscription
read, ‘All is not gold that glitters!’
“My soul quailed before the mystery. I could scarcely move or speak, so
great was my bewilderment; and as for the patron, it is impossible to
describe his terror and consternation, as he stood there, with open
mouth and protruding eyeballs, gazing on the coins upon the board where
he had laid them. I too looked upon them; and even while we did so, a
terrible thing took place; for the letters upon the disks changed color
before our very eyes, first to a light blue, changing to deep crimson,
and finally assuming a blood-red color. When, at the end of thirty
seconds, this color did not change, we looked closer at them, and, to
our absolute amazement, found that the characters themselves had
altered, and instead of the sentence above quoted, we read the
following:
“‘Remember Ravalette! Fear not!’
“With a cry of agony the man dashed the accursed coins to the ground,
and instantly fell himself in a deathly swoon. A great excitement now
ensued. The porter, Jeanette, and half a dozen other inmates, rushed to
the assistance of their fallen master.
“Tenderly and carefully we bore him into the house, and speedily
resorted to those well-known means of restoration used in such cases,
which it were superfluous to mention; suffice it that, at the expiration
of half an hour, the man revived, and bidding him and the rest a short
good-bye, and promising to return on the morrow if I did not quit Paris,
I took my departure.
“Before I left, however, it occurred to me that I would secure the
marvellous coins, or, at least, a few of them; and for this purpose I,
accompanied by the _concierge_, who had seen his master dash them away,
went into the court-yard where he had thrown them. Carefully and long we
searched over the smooth stone pavements. The marks where they had
struck were there, but not a single coin could be found. It was
absolutely certain that no person _in_ the house had picked them up, for
all these were in attendance on the patron. It was equally certain that
no one from the street had done so; for the gate was fast bolted and
shut, and had been ever since I had entered the premises to inquire of
the porter.
“At length we gave up the task of finding them as utterly hopeless. I
looked at the porter and shook my head; the porter looked at me and
shook his head in return, as much as to say, ‘It is a very strange
affair!’ At that moment a voice, coming from God knows where, for it
seemed to issue neither from above nor below, in the house or out of
it--a hollow, half-pathetic, half-cynical voice, echoed our unspoken
thought--‘_It is a VERY strange affair!_’ The horror-stricken porter
crossed himself devoutly, and, falling on his knees, began to pray,
while I in the meanwhile undid the bolts, opened the port, and rushed
into the open street.
“The thing was altogether of so weird a character, that I almost doubted
the evidence of my senses; yet, on recalling all the circumstances from
first to last, the testimony affirming the events was altogether too
strong, overpowering and direct, to be doubted for an instant.
“In books of ancient lore; in the old Black letter volumes of antiquity;
in the recital of the exploits of Appolonius of TYANÆ; in the Life of
Darwin; in the story of Grugantus, and in the ‘Records of the Weird
Brethren of Appulia,’ I had read of Magic Marvels, almost too wonderful
for the belief of those ignorant masses contemporaneous with the authors
and heroes of the various legends. But in the light of modern learning,
all these things had been resolved into three primitive elements, and
these were: 1st., and principal. Ignorance of the Masses. 2d. The clouds
of superstition which for long ages hovered over the world. And, 3d.
The amazing skill possessed by the various arch-impostors of antiquity.
Thus I accounted for much that was reported to have taken place in ‘ye
Olden Tyme;’ but how to explain away what myself and several others
had just witnessed, on the same easy and general hypothesis, was a task
altogether beyond achievement. To attempt to get rid of the difficulty
on the supposition of mere ‘Fancy,’ was simply ridiculous: and yet,
while one does not feel at liberty to admit the idea of Magic, here were
circumstances of such a tremendous character, as to utterly forbid and
defy explication upon any other ground whatever.
“This was the current of my thoughts as I left the street of Michel le
Compte, and turned up that of the Temple. As I slowly walked along,
buried in a labyrinth of conjecture, the idea suddenly occurred to me
that perhaps, after all, Ravalette and the people of the house in the
Rue Michel le Compte, might merely have been performing parts in a very
cleverly designed, and capitally acted drama; though how to account for
the kaleidoscopic changes of the coins, I could not at first imagine.
‘Ah!’ said I, at length, ‘I have it! Hurrah! Bravo! Eureka, ten times
over! The secret’s out, and I’m the man that found it!’ A sudden thought
occurred to me, by the aid of which, even the coin mystery, was cleared
up most satisfactorily; and that which ten minutes before was a profound
and horrible mystery, was now, apparently, as clear as the noontide sun.
Here is the train of reasoning which led me to this hopeful result:
Ravalette was a wealthy and eccentric gentleman, who, observing my
natural enthusiasm for the antique, and aptitude to the occult, had
determined to either amuse himself and friends at my expense, possibly
for the purpose of curing some of them of what, perhaps, he regarded as
the same weakness; or, taking pity on what he looked upon as a sad and
dangerous infatuation, had resorted to this rather costly experiment, in
the hope that at its termination a perfect cure might be effected. The
people in the house were, together with the woman and children at the
_Barrière_, his confederates in the scheme. He was a learned man; saw
that I could not be easily taken in; and therefore brought the wonders
of chemical and ventriloquial sciences to his assistance--the latter in
the affair of the floating voice, the former in the matter of the coins
or disks. These coins had been coated with a substance that would, on
exposure to the atmosphere, exhale away; and with this exhalation the
first set of characters would of course disappear. Beneath this external
coating was another, which, on contact with the air, would assume a
peculiar color; beneath this, in turn, was another, and still another;
the last of all, being that on which was written the last series of
letters composing a sentence. The appearance of these words was the cue
to the patron to utter his cry, dash the coins from his hands, and
pretend to swoon. In the commotion resultant therefrom, attention would
be drawn from the cause of the apparent disaster, and afford ample
opportunity for their removal. The sentence, ‘_It is a very strange
affair_,’ would be the very one naturally suggested under the
circumstances, and had happily been selected as the most fitting one to
afford exercise to the ventriloquist employed; and this apparent echoing
of an unspoken thought would add additional piquancy to the scene, and
materially assist in piling up the horripilant.
“There! was not that a fine specimen of analysis? It was almost perfect,
and would have answered most admirably had it not been for one little
thing, and that was, simply, that _it was not true_--a trifling
objection, perhaps, yet one absolutely fatal. Why, will be seen
hereafter.
“I was just about half satisfied with my ingenious speculation, and no
more, after the first burst of joy at my supposed discovery had
subsided, and cool reason once more took the helm. Be it true or false,
I determined to go back to Belleville and pursue my investigations a
little further. A passing omnibus soon brought me to the _Barrière_, and
to my great joy I saw the identical party that had made the curious
remark about my being in search of my own ghost. The nurse and children
were intently watching the evolutions of a set of nomadic marionettes,
and listening to the stereo-type drolleries of the man in the box who
worked the little puppets. Luckily the whole party, with at least three
hundred others, were so taken up with the antics of Polichinel and his
shrew of a wife, that the young ones nor the nurse saw me. I therefore
stepped into a coffee-shop close at hand, called for a _tasse_, and then
sent one of the waiters to fetch the woman with the three children
dressed in yellow velveteen. The man obeyed, and speedily returned,
followed by the party sent for.
“Upon seeing who it was that had summoned her, the young woman felt
alarmed, fearing that the remarks she had made, when I entered the cab
an hour or so previously, had offended me, and that my present business
was to cause her to be punished for her insolence. For of all places on
this civilized earth, Paris is the one where a stranger is best
protected from injury or impertinence--at least, it then was. I soon set
the woman’s mind at ease on that point; and having purchased some
_gâteaux_ for the children, and the same, with a vessel of coffee, for
the nurse, I requested her to be seated, and tell me what caused her to
use such curious terms, with regard to myself, a little while before.
“‘Lord bless you, sir,’ she said, ‘I did but repeat what an old man said
who stood on the side of the carriage opposite to that by which you
entered. I had just crossed over from his side when you saw and heard
me. As you came running down the street, everybody saw you, and that you
were in a hurry, and several persons made observations as to the cause
of your great haste. Said one, “The man’s mad!” said another, “His woman
has just run off with a lover, taking his twins along for company’s
sake, and he’s after them with a sharp stick!” Said the old man at my
side, “He’s in search of what he won’t find very soon.” “What’s that,
sir?” I ventured to ask. “He’s in search of--ahem!--in search of--_his
own ghost, my dear_!” said the old man, as he darted up the street. The
notion was so funny, that I remembered _it all the while I was crossing_
the street--a very long time for us _Bonnes_ to recollect anything, _mon
cher ami_; and when Auburt there asked me what ailed you, why, I looked
wise, and repeated the grey-beard’s observation, and--another cup of
coffee, if you please--that was all.’
“I breathed freer. ‘But tell me, my dear, what sort of man this old
fellow was?’ ‘Certainly--another _gâteau, garçon_; monsieur will pay for
it--certainly!’ and the young woman went on to describe--Ravalette! as
well as I could have done myself, had that mysterious individual stood
before me then and there. It was enough. I was satisfied, and determined
to push my inquiries further. I thanked the girl, paid the bill of
thirty-five sous, left the place, and hurried as fast as I possibly
could to the flower-gardens, that, it will be remembered, Ravalette and
myself had visited together. I went to the first one, and asked the
gardener if he had seen the old man who had been my companion on a
recent visit, an hour or two before?
“‘_Old_ man? Well, you _are_ a funny man, to call a boy of seventeen
years an _old_ man! I recollect you well enough, for you bought a fine
bouquet, one of the damask roses composing which you now carry in your
button-hole. I remember you well enough, and the beardless stripling,
your companion; but I have not seen him since you both left together.’
“‘Bah, my friend!’ said I, ‘it won’t do. I know perfectly well that my
comrade here was _not_ a youngster, but a man of full seventy years of
age, if a single day!’
“‘_Sacré bleu!_ You’d better tell me I lie at once, and be done with it!
You may _say_ it was an old man, but I’ll be cursed if it wasn’t a young
one, not yet out of his teens; and what’s more to the purpose, I’ll back
my opinion, and bet you an even bottle of _Jean Lafitte_, forty-two years
old, that the person who accompanied you here this day was a small,
thin, sallow-faced youth of not over fifteen years! Will you take the
wager?’
“‘Yes, and forty more just like it; but who shall be our umpire, and
decide the bet?’
“‘Why, let the witnesses, my men, and my wife or daughter, decide. I’ll
warrant they won’t lie for the sake of a bottle of wine. Are you
agreed?’
“‘Yes, call them on; I’ll trust them.’
“‘Of course you may, for they are honest folks. My wife let you both in
at the door; I sold you a bouquet; one of my men went round the garden
with you, and the other ran to fetch change for the five-franc piece you
gave me to take pay from. Here, wife, Joseph, and Pierre; come here all
of you. I’ve made a bet with the gentleman, and want you three to decide
it.’
“In a moment the persons called stood before us, and the gardener said
to me: ‘Now, monsieur, you and I will go to the other end of the garden;
when there, I will describe to you the person who accompanied you here
this afternoon. Then we will call the witnesses, one at a time, first
separating them, so that they cannot agree upon a uniform story for or
against me, but give the truth exactly, as the truth appears to each
one.’
“Nothing could be fairer than this proposition, and therefore I gave my
assent to it immediately; whereupon the two men were sent to stand at
opposite ends of the garden, his wife took her place in a third, while
her husband and myself went to the fourth. Having arrived there:
“‘Your friend,’ said the gardener, ‘was just as I have described him,
with this addition, that he wore polish-leather shoes, a Leghorn or
Panama hat, carried a switch cane, wore light jean pantaloons, a coat
_au saque_, and vest of white Cashmere. Remember this. Now, Joseph, come
here,’ said he, raising his voice and motioning the man toward us. ‘Be
so good as to describe the person who came here to-day with this
gentleman.’
“‘I will with pleasure, master. The _negro_ who came with this gentleman
was very fat and heavy, had large splay feet, tremendous hands, broad,
flat face, a nose that would weigh a pound, and lips twice as heavy. His
hair was woolly, teeth very white and regular; and he wore low shoes,
green cap, knee breeches, red vest, and purple jacket!’
“It is difficult to say which of us two looked most astonished when
Joseph finished his portrait of my companion. Joseph was the man who
conducted us around the garden. We were the only visitors of the day,
and--
“‘Damn it, Joseph, you must be crazy! for the man was’----
“‘Hold on!’ said I to the gardener; ‘remember the terms of our wager,
and say nothing till all have been questioned on the subject;’ then,
turning to the man, I said: ‘Go to your corner, Joseph. Pierre, come
hither;’ and he came.
“‘Now, my friend, we want you to accurately describe the individual who
accompanied me to these gardens to-day. Tell us exactly how the person
appeared to you. Will you, my friend?’
“‘_Oui, certainement._ The _old lady_ you mean. _Malateste!_ It makes me
laugh--_pardonez moi, monsieur_, but I can’t help it--it makes me laugh
to think about her, _ma foi_! What a queer old lady it was, to be sure!
Such a little pinched-up face; and what a nose and chin, look you! Ecod!
it was for all the world _la casse-noix_--a regular pair of
nut-crackers! Certes, I took her to be the grandmother of Methusalah,
or sister to Adam’s first wife. Oh, ho, ho--he, ha, _peste_! I shall die
o’ laughing! And then _such_ a dress! Not a single article of cloth
about her, but all she wore made of thin green-and-blue morocco; and
then such dainty slippers, looking for all the world as if made of the
wings of _Pappilon_! and such a head-dress--withered flowers, and two
bushels of faded ribbon! _Par le grande Dieu_, the lady _was_ a queer
one!’ and Pierre went back to his corner, laughing as if he would
explode.
“The gardener looked astonished beyond all measure. How _I_ looked
cannot be told; but how I _felt_, no mortal pen could possibly describe.
We both kept silent, and advanced to where Madame _la Jardinière_ stood,
patiently waiting her turn to be questioned, and impatiently wondering
what was the matter with Pierre, the fellow laughed so uproariously, and
enjoyed ‘the feast of memory’ with such a decided gusto.
“‘_Ma chere femme_,’ said my comrade, ‘will you please be so good as to
describe the person whom you admitted here to-day along with monsieur?
Certes, I believe the Devil himself is at the bottom of the business,
for no two persons are agreed in description. But you, my darling,
_you_, who are all the while reading poetry books;--all about Vido
(Ovid?), and Virgil, and Spearshaker, and all those great people--you
can describe this person perfectly; can’t you, my sweet?’ and the
gardener looked imploringly at his plump and buxom _compagnon de lit_.
“Now, of all mortals it is most unsafe and dangerous to flatter a
French woman, and madame was French all the way through; consequently
she determined, on so fitting an occasion, to prove her husband’s
encomiums perfectly well founded; and she began the display with a
quotation from the Bard of Avon’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“‘_Ah, mon ange avec les bottes_--my angel in boots--do you not know
that Joseph has been a poet ever since I instructed him in trochees,
dactyls, spondees, dythyrambics, hexameters, iambics, acatalectics,
and--anapests--and’----
“‘Oh, may the devil fly away with all of your Anna cats, or Mary
cats!--damn all cats! And as for your Anna Pests--why, what’s she got to
do with Joseph? Is she another grisette the fellow’s running after? Why,
that’s fifteen different women in fifteen weeks. I can’t see how the
fellow’s constitution stands it: and then _you’ve_ done the introducing
business? Shame on you--you ought to be’----
“Here I stepped in and told the gardener that his lady did not mean
_cats_ or females, but simply _feet_, measures, and scansions of poetry.
This mollified him, and the lady courtesied to me, and resumed:
“‘Yes, darling--_ogre_’--this last was spoken _sub voce_--‘yes, dearest,
the gentleman’s right. Joseph is a poet; Pierre is a lunatic; and the
gentleman himself is beyond all question as deeply in love as he can
get; and these are the reasons why neither describes the person who
attended with him alike. That prince of soldiers, who because he was so
terrible in war, when he shook his spear, the English call
Shake-the-spear, says that--
“‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool
Reason comprehends.
The lover, the lunatic, and the poet are of imagination
All compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold--
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees
Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things,
The poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives
To airy nothings a local habitation and a name.’
“‘But what, my dear, has all this to do with the questions I asked you?
Look here, Ninette; I believe it’s you that’s gone mad, rose in
love--_sacre!_--I wish I could catch you and your Shake-the-spear loving
once. I’d fix him and you too, my lady, that I would! I’d fix his flint
so that he wouldn’t shake any more spears around my garden, that I
would! Will you have done with all your rigmarole, and tell what you
know?’
“‘Certainly. The gentleman’s sweetheart, who came with him to-day, and
who went with me into my private room to arrange her hair and adjust her
petticoats, was as fine and pretty a young blonde of eighteen years as
ever sat a man’s heart beating triple bobmajors against his ribs. Such
ankles, such feet, such a bloom upon her cheeks and lips!--ah! and such
a _tournure_! such hips, such embonpoint! _Sacristie!_ it’s lucky I was
not a man when I fixed her crinoline, or, _ma foi_! I should have gone
mad and run off with her, leaving monsieur to mourn his loss, while I
revelled in the essence of love with his _fiancée_. Besides that’----
“‘Stop, stop, Ninette--for God’s sake stop! I have lost a bottle of
_Jean Lafitte_, forty odd years old, and lost my brains besides!’
“Here the whole five of us collected in a group, and an explanation
followed which instantly banished all mirth from Pierre, and all poetry
from _la Jardinière_.
“Declining all thoughts of the wager and the wine, I left the party in a
maze of stupor, and sped as hastily as I could to the _Guinguette_, or
Tea-Garden, where, it will be remembered, Ravalette and myself had
entered to converse with the proprietor regarding his novel and costly
experiment in the way of feasting poor people _a la les richeuse_.
“Entering this place, I put the same question to the proprietor that I
had to the gardener and the man of Michel le Compte; but instead of
surprise at his answer, I was absolutely dumb-founded, for the man
insisted that I entered the shop _quite alone_, but that I had conversed
with him in two separate and perfectly distinct voices, _au
ventriloque_--which he had regarded as very singular, but concluded that
I was a student of ventriloquism, and took every opportunity to test my
proficiency, and had now come back to ascertain what success attended
the experiment.
“I was too much horrified to speak; but, simply nodding my adieux, took
my departure in a mood much easier to be imagined than described.
“Not yet content, I made inquiries as to whether any one had seen two
horsemen of a peculiar description pass through any of the streets of
Belleville.
“Nobody had seen any such, or indeed any horsemen whatever. I was
thunderstruck.
“‘I’ll track them!’ I cried, as a last resource; ‘for the place where we
walked, where the horse and groom stood waiting, and where the old man
mounted, was a soft, yielding, grassless turf. This will decide whether
I have been dealing with the living or the dead, and that too in this
broad daylight.’
“I ran thither. Not a trace of a horse’s hoofs; not a single vestige of
Ravalette’s footprints save one, and that one the fac-simile of the
description formerly given. My own foot-marks were plain enough, but
only the one other was to be found! Here the mystery grew thicker and
thicker, nor could I see the first glimmer of a way to clear it up.
“Slowly and despondently, I retraced my steps toward Paris, taking care
to inquire as I went, whether any person had seen two men on horseback
go toward Charronne, Villette, Menilmontant, or through the Barrières. I
might just as well not have asked.
“But the chapter of devilry was not yet concluded, for what subsequently
took place actually threw all that had gone before it entirely in the
shade. These things I will now relate, first premising my narrative.
“One day, about a week before I first spoke to Ravalette in the Louvre,
I happened to be spending an afternoon in the Palais Royale, along with
my friends the Barons di Corvaja and Du P----t, to both of whom I had
taken letters from America. On the day alluded to, I met at D----’s room
in the Rue Beaujolais, and then and there became acquainted with, an
English gentleman of easy means and polished mind, by the name of Carr.
This gentleman resided with his family in a splendid mansion in the Rue
du Chemin Vert. After a long and interesting conversation, we parted,
but not till Mr. Carr had cordially taken me by the hand, expressed a
desire to maintain the acquaintance, and invited me to call on him at
his residence in the Rue du Chemin Vert. I felt gratified at his
frankness, and accepted his polite invitation. Mr. Carr named the day,
and I agreed to go; and accordingly had spent the evening and took tea
with him, his family and a few select guests, some five or six days
before the eventful day, the achievement of which I have just recounted.
The thing which I am about to narrate is not only strange, but in many
respects horrible, and my mind is agitated to the last degree by the
astounding occurrences--things which I beheld with my own eyes, felt
with my own senses, realized with my own spirit; and yet I scarcely dare
give credit to that which I am sensible _cannot, could not_ have been
an illusion. My soul is filled with wonder; and I hasten to give a
true version of the affair while all is yet fresh and vivid before me;
indeed, it will ever be so, till age shall numb my faculties.”
CHAPTER IV.
MURDER WILL OUT.
“The circumstances were, briefly, these:
“I attended, as before observed, the _fête sociale_, at the house of my
friend Mr. Carr--Leonard Carr. The party was given in honor of a young
literary friend of the family, who had recently gained great renown as a
writer of fiction. To this young man I was introduced just before we all
sat down to the festive board to partake of the many good things so
bounteously set before us.
“After the repast was concluded we all adjourned to the parlor and
entered into conversation. Topic after topic had been discussed, and at
length the ‘Turning tables,’ then so rife in all parts of the world, and
Paris especially, became the theme of observation and criticism.
“‘Bah!’ said Mrs. Carr, ‘I deem the whole thing silly, besides being one
of the most contemptible humbugs ever ran after by a pack of silly
people--I was going to say--fools: I am convinced there is really
nothing in it, and that all this stuff about moving furniture, and
ghosts, and other spectral gentry, is but the product of heated fancy,
if not of heads and hearts devoid of truth, principle, and moral
rectitude; stories got up for swindling purposes, and to gull that
credulous pack of ninnies known as “The Public,”--and a precious set
they are, to be sure! Who believes, for instance, a tithe of the reputed
wonders of the famous American “Miracle Circle,” or that they are
anything more than clever tricks played off by a set of waggish fellows
on a gullible community of Yankees, having in view the ultimate object
of exposing and exploding the whole so-called spiritual mysteries? I
don’t, I’m sure.’
“Poor lady! She little dreamed under what cruel circumstances she was
doomed so soon to verify the truth of the Latin motto,
“‘Nemo mortalium, omnibus horis sapit,’
so meaningly quoted to myself by Ravalette. Little did she then dream,
in the plenitude of intellect, that not many days would elapse ere she
admitted all she now so mockingly and scornfully derided and laughed at,
and that ere long she would cower in the very extremity of terror and
mental dread, before these very mysteries she now so dogmatically
denied.
“Her husband took upon himself the task of answering her, thus relieving
us guests of the always unpleasant office of holding a wordy contest
with a woman. He said:
“‘You are, my dear, permit me to say, in behalf of myself and these
gentlemen, a little too hasty in your conclusions, too sweeping in your
remarks, and in the characterization of the wonderful phenomena of these
latter days. I know, my love, that you will give _me_ credit for rather
more than the usual share of suspicion, scepticism, and doubt, regarding
certain marvellous things said to have recently taken place in England,
America, and even here in Paris. You know that it is my nature to admit
nothing as proved--especially of such an implied nature--without
absolute demonstrative evidence. The proof must be irrefragible--the
testimony unbroken and indubitable, else I accept nothing. I certainly
do not believe in spirits, much less that such things come to this world
and flit and move around us, taking interest in all our affairs, and
meddling with our business in a thousand ways, as it is alleged they do
by those who believe in them. And yet, with all this, I confess that I
have seen things that stagger me--indeed, that demonstrate beyond
dispute the existence of a power, mighty, secret, occult, and working
out its marvellous designs without the slightest human aid or influence
whatever. Mind me, I do not attribute any or all of these results to
spiritual agency, but I do say that the force at bottom is marvellously
intelligent, and for all the world like that of man’s. For instance, you
will remember F----, who came from America to astonish the French. Well,
actuated by curiosity, I resolved to form one of a circle of six who had
made arrangements to test his powers at his own rooms. Accordingly we
met him by appointment at the Café Jououy near the Palaise Royal, and
together we seven started for his hotel. Now, as I walked along, the
idea suggested itself, that perhaps the fellow had made arrangements in
his rooms to surprise us by a resort to some mountebankish performance,
and therefore, in order to try his sincerity, and at the same time guard
against any mere trickery or legerdemain, I suggested that we repair to
apartments elsewhere than at his hotel. To my surprise he assented to
this arrangement without a murmur, and we repaired to a room at the
house of one of the company, Monsieur Benjamin, in the Rue de Clichy.
When there, we all sat around a small table with our fourteen hands laid
flat upon its top. For a while nothing occurred, save a few knocks or
thumps upon the table, which F---- attributed to spirits, but which I
suspected his knees produced. While thus we sat (it was broad daylight,
and the sun shone brightly through the windows), we distinctly saw, and
_I_ actually, palpably felt of, a _fifteenth_ hand. This hand was
apparently solid flesh and blood. It appeared to be that of a mulatto
girl of fifteen or sixteen summers, and one of the party subsequently
told me in confidence that it was the very fac-simile of the right hand
of a girl whom he once knew in the Isle de Bourbon, and who had
destroyed herself by poison for love of the very man who told me the
story! This hand came from beneath the table and extended itself eight
or ten inches over the edge at first. Then it gradually rose in the air,
displaying a magnificent set of fingers, upon the middle joint of one of
which appeared the semblance of a large and peculiarly-shaped brown
mole, surrounded by three smaller ones, and it was by these marks that
my friend pretended to recognize it. The hand was attached to about
two-fifths of a fore-arm, completely covered with the semblance of a
lace sleeve, terminating at the wrist in a jewelled band, and at the
other extremity by a flaring and projecting ruffle. The hand, after a
while, rose into the air, where it floated for two minutes. It then
descended, seized hold of a small silver bell upon the mantel and rung
it sharply all over the room; after which it replaced it, took hold of a
pencil and wrote forty-seven words upon the ceiling of the lofty-vaulted
apartment; threw down the pencil, patted each of our hands, and then
gradually faded away in the air, just over the centre of the table. We
rose after it had gone, placed a stand upon the table, a chair upon
that, so as to reach the writing on the wall (which yet remained there),
and found a short message to the company in general, and signed by the
very name of Mr. ----’s _inamorata of the Isle de Bourbon_! Now, my
dear, was all this hum-bug?’
“To this, the lady, whose scepticism would not abate one jot, even in
the face of such an--to all but a Rosicrucian--overwhelming
demonstration as this, replied:
“‘Why, I presume you had all taken a little too much wine, fell asleep,
got up, wrote on the wall, and--Bah! It’s all humbug! and that settles
the question at once!’
“The lady was silent, and the literary lion--I will call him Mr. A----,
for whom the party was gotten up, entered the arena of conversation, and
observed that: ‘Spectral or Spiritual science--he preferred the former
term--was yet but in its infancy in Christendom, provided what a casual
acquaintance of his, a man of extraordinary research in all things
occult, and whom he had met under peculiar circumstances but a little
while before--affirmed to be true with regard to the faith, philosophy,
and practices of a certain branch or rather family of the Hindoos or
other Eastern tribes.
“‘This individual,’ pursued Mr. A----, ‘is a firm and devout believer in
Spiritualism, and yet contends that not over two-tenths of what passes
current under that term, is really that which it is claimed to be. Nay,
further: he declares, and gives his reasons why, which latter are very
just and tenable, that not more than once in fifty times are the actions
and speeches delivered under trance the result of Spiritual action; but
that when not the absolute offspring of imposture, which is rarely the
case, other, and very often _purely physical_ causes are at work, which
are frequently far more potent than what is known as “spiritual
influence,” inasmuch as the results are productive of better, greater,
and more satisfactory phenomena, and of far more interest and value to
mankind, and which have been entirety overlooked in the haste and zeal
with which people seek to gratify their thirst for the marvellous, by
attributing whatever baffles their powers of analysis to a supermundane
origin.
“‘This person,’ continued Mr. A., ‘asserted also that he could himself
produce similar and even far more wonderful and startling effects, by
means entirely material, than many which are claimed to originate beyond
the earth. “This,” said he, “I can do under circumstances that will
forever put the quietus on one portion of the spiritual theory. There is
a science in existence that may very properly be called Spectreology or
Phantomism, whose wonders vie with the best of those emanating really
from the spirit world!” During his travels in the Orient, he said, the
_modus operandi_ of several startling effects had been imparted to him
by a person named Ramo Djava, and that, were it not for his greatly
impaired health, which rendered the experiments alluded to highly
dangerous, he would give public displays of his power. As to the means
used, that must remain a secret, for he had promised to initiate only
one person, and that not till his dying hour. But, at all events, he was
willing to demonstrate, before a select few, that there really is more
between earth and heaven than even the loftiest savants dream of.
“‘Having my curiosity thus excited, I, with great difficulty, prevailed
on this person to consent to give a display of his ability, before a
select circle of eighteen. I have invited five persons, and the present
company will exactly complete the requisite number, and I cheerfully
extend you all an invitation to be present at half-past six o’clock
precisely, at the mansion of our mutual friend, the Baron de Marc, this
day week!’
“This ended the conversation on that particular theme, and, shortly
afterwards, the party dissolved, agreeing to meet again on the night
mentioned, which, strange coincidence! was the very one of the singular
adventure with ‘the ghost of Ravalette;’ for, to tell the truth, I had
by this time begun to suspect that my old man of the Louvre--he who
appeared under three different aspects at one and the same time, nay,
under _five_, and who was heard to speak, though himself unseen, by the
man of the Guinguette--was something more than mortal.
“You must bear in mind the fact, that the party and conversation at Mr.
Carr’s took place _before_ I had ever seen Ravalette at all to speak
with him. And now, if you please, we will continue the train of events
in progress before I made this digression.
“You will remember that, after making fruitless inquiries for the two
horsemen, and an equally fruitless search after foot-prints on the soil
near Belleville, that I took my way toward Paris, slowly, on foot,
musing deeply as I went along. As I passed down the Rue Faubourg du
Temple, the tolling of a distant clock announced the hour of four. I
remembered my engagement at the Baron’s, but, as I had fully two hours
left in which to dress for the occasion, I determined to drop in at
D’Emprat’s, in the Rue Michel le Compte, as I went by, and hear whatever
might have turned up in my absence.
“I reached the street, and was greatly surprised to find a large and
highly excited crowd of people before the gate, and the more so, as I
beheld the surplices of at least a dozen priests of the Order St.
Lazare, elbowing their way, and trying to pass both in and out of the
house.
“With heart palpitating with vague and dread uneasiness, I approached an
intelligent-looking man, and, assuming a carelessness by no means felt,
asked him the cause and reason of the gathering.
“‘Lord bless you, sir!’ he said. ‘Do you not know that the devil and
five of his imps have just been on a visit to that house, and carried
off three or four of the inmates through the roof in a flame of _blue
fire_? If you don’t know it, I assure you it is a fact!’
“I saw in this answer the legitimate effect of superstition, and that
the man’s cloth belied his intelligence; I, therefore, drew out a sheet
of paper and a pencil, and began to flourish them in the eyes of the
crowd for the purpose of attracting its attention.
“My _ruse_ succeeded; the people set me down as a reporter of the press,
and instantly gave way right and left; so that I had but little
difficulty in gaining an entrance to the building. Once there, I soon
learned that the poor D’Emprat had relapsed into the swoon occasioned by
his first fright, and had passed thence into the most frightful
convulsions, exclaiming all the while, as the thick foam rolled from his
bloodless lips, ‘Oh, the devil! the devil has come for my soul, _because
I killed Baptiste Lemoine thirty-seven years ago! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!
They will drag me to hell! Ah, God!_’
“His wife had exerted all her influence and power to stifle these
dangerous cries, but without avail. His cries still increased in fury,
until at last the police had forced an entrance into the house, and were
speedily followed by a score of priests, who, hearing that the devil was
in Paris, in proper person, were very anxious to try the effect of a
little shower-bath of holy water, as well as to get a sight of their
arch enemy, whom, doubtless, the vast majority of them regarded secretly
as nothing more than a man--or, rather, devil--of straw.
“The news spread like wild-fire that the devil had appeared, and to the
questions asked by priest and bailiff of the porter, he confirmed the
rumor, and told, as best he could, the incidents of the afternoon. His
story did not rest here, however, but, taking two of the officers aside,
he told them something which caused them to start back in the wildest
horror, and cross themselves most devoutly. The result of the interview
was, that the officers cautioned the porter from uttering one word of
what he had just told them to any person else. After this, they all
again entered the room where D’Emprat was still struggling in all the
terrors of delirium, still accusing himself of a long-committed
homicide, still calling on God and the priests to save him from the
clutches of the devil, whom he averred he saw beside him armed with fork
and trident, ready to drag his unfortunate soul to perdition and the
damned. During all this fearful scene, Madame D’Emprat was doing all she
could to quiet her husband, but without avail. The man went on harder
than before. The ghosts of evil deeds were there, and avenging angels
lashed his soul to frenzy.
“‘Be still,’ she cried, ‘for Jesus’ sake, be still! They will carry you
to Bicêtre, and from there to _le Boureau_, and you will die _au coupe
tête_![8] Oh, be still! or, if you must talk, say something else than
_that_!’
[8] On the guillotine.
“Every word uttered by the woman and the man was quietly written down,
unobserved, by one of the officers, who used my pencil and paper, and
the back of his comrade as a desk.
“What strange, mysterious power was it that caused me mechanically to
purchase a pencil and paper on my way from Belleville down to Michel le
Compte?
“God’s ways are mysterious, altogether past finding out; and I inwardly
praised him as the mighty fact became apparent, that the people of the
house were _not_ in league, as I had conjectured might be the case, with
Ravalette; and that the mysterious agent of Divine Retribution was _not_
of an infernal nature, be it or he whatever else. A load was lifted off
my heart--too soon, alas! to be let down heavier than before.
“‘You did not kill him, D’Emprat! So don’t say you did any more!’
exclaimed the woman in the accents of despair.
“‘’Tis a _lie_! I did!’ yelled the unfortunate man. ‘I killed him with
the hatchet in the cellar, and buried him under the grey horse’s stall
in the stable!’
“‘My God! we are ruined!’ screamed the now frantic woman. ‘I always
suspected that you killed my brother, but never believed it until now.
And, yet, I do not even now believe it; for’----
“‘_I can prove it_; for I well remember a bloody hatchet, and that
master never would let me clean the stable of the grey horse; and that I
have watched him dig gold from the ground there, and heard him accuse
himself in his sleep!’ said the _concierge_, coming forward.
“‘Then, D’Emprat, and you, madame, I arrest in the name of the law; and
you, porter, as a witness. Officers, do your duty--take the
prisoners--clear the house!’ said their chief.
“Five minutes afterwards, the unfortunate people were being led to
prison, and I was on the way to my hotel to dress--even under such
circumstances--for the soirée at the Baron’s, but in a frame of mind
that little fitted me to be a spectator of philosophical experiments.
Yet my word was pledged, and go I must, and go I did--six o’clock
finding me in the Baron’s parlor.
“I am perfectly sensible that, even in what I have narrated, the
credulity of many persons would be taxed to the utmost. It is easy
enough to believe that such things as I have described occurred long
ages ago, in the green and halcyon days of Magic, but it is difficult to
imagine such things as taking place in the broad light of this
nineteenth century. Millions, aye hundreds of millions, have believed,
do, and, in coming years, perhaps ages, will believe in the startling
records of a magic similar to that I have detailed, and which is
described so briefly, yet so graphically, in the Book of Exodus; and yet
these people will strenuously insist that the day of such things--of
such exhibitions of the Upper Magic--has for ever passed away, totally
unmindful of the great fact, that, when the astonishing things there
recorded were accomplished, there must of necessity have been a law--a
natural law--in accordance with, and by which, they were done, and that
no law of Nature has ever yet been repealed; consequently, they must
exist to-day in as full perfection and power as ever.
“What remains of the present affair to be told, may, with what has
already been related (and the truth of which may be ascertained most
readily by correspondence with the parties named), be implicitly relied
on as correct in all essential particulars; and yet, the occurrences
that took place on that eventful night are of a kind so horrible, so
utterly monstrous, that, at times, I almost believe that we all--twelve
healthful men, and six women--were laboring under some strong delusion.
I should still cling to this belief, with the pertinacity of a miser to
his golden god, the bigot to his creed, or the drowning wretch to the
narrow plank that promises a renewal of life’s tenure, were it not that
facts, appalling in themselves, forever and utterly _preclude_ the
possibility that I--that _we_--were mistaken and deceived. What these
facts were, will be most clearly shown in the sequel.”
CHAPTER V.
SÉANCE AT THE BARON’S--DIABLERIE EXTRAORDINAIRE.
“With features horribler than Hell e’er traced
On its own brood; no Demon of the waste,
No church-yard ghoul, caught lingering in the light
Of the blest sun, e’er blasted human sight
With lineaments so foul, so fierce as those
The Impostor now, in grinning mockery shows.”
“When I reached the house I found the company above enumerated seated in
the parlor, and all most anxiously awaiting the appearance of the
individual who was to afford us entertainment, and, if possible, some
instruction also. For awhile it appeared that we were doomed to be
disappointed. The expected party had promised to attend at thirty
minutes to eight, and it was nearly that time already, and still there
were no signs of his coming; but, as St. Eustache tolled out the half
hour, a ring at the door-bell announced his arrival.
“The man was a tall and comely personage, apparently of Irish
extraction, and had nothing whatever about him at all remarkable;
indeed, he was a very so-soish sort of individual, who at first refused
his name to everybody, because, to quote his own words: ‘If I remain
_incog._ I shall not be lionized, which in other terms means “bored,”
and pestered by persons seeking to gratify a morbid and impertinent
curiosity--people who look for full-grown miracles, and expect to find
them, instead of studying arts and sciences, and therewith increasing
their knowledge and enriching their experience by a more intimate
acquaintance with philosophic truths, and the recondite mysteries of
mighty Nature.’
“The gentleman was very polished and polite, entering freely into
conversation, and seemed altogether so well pleased with his audience
that he threw off all reserve, laughed, joked, made puns, played upon
words, and kept us in good spirits for half an hour, at the end of which
time he gave us his name as a profound secret, to go no further. That
name was a singular one. It was Mai Vatterale--a very curious name! He
soon proposed an adjournment to the back parlor, and after reaching it
he proceeded to arrange the chairs, six in a line, in the form of a
triangle; after doing this, Monsieur Vatterale signified to the Baron
that his part of the preliminaries was completed, whereupon that
gentleman, turning to his guests, said: ‘I was informed on the day that
the present meeting was arranged with Monsieur, that in all cases it was
absolutely necessary that the physical systems of all who assist at, or
witness his experiments, should be duly fortified with food, for what
particular reason I cannot imagine, nor is it necessary that I should
inquire, seeing that it is his rule, of which all present were duly
notified, so that all might forego their usual repasts at their own
homes, and partake of a little _souper_ with me, previous to commencing
our experiments, and’----
“‘_Permettez moi, s’il vous plait_,’ said Vatterale, courteously. ‘_Si
cela vous est agréable_’--it is my custom, and is for the purpose of
preventing any ill effects that might result from a shock of the nerves,
which, believe me, you will be apt to experience before we have done.’
Of course such an explanation, indicating, as it certainly did, no small
degree of preventive solicitude on the part of the illustrious
foreigner, was perfectly satisfactory, and was accepted in a proper
spirit by the whole company.
“‘This way, ladies; this way, gentlemen, follow me,’ said the Baron,
gaily giving his arm to his wife, and leading the way to his splendid
_salle a manger_.
“The worthy noble had called it _un petit souper_, but the magnificent
_spread_ before us rendered it a somewhat difficult task to imagine what
would constitute a _grand_ supper in his estimation. To describe it is
no part of the task I am engaged on; and, therefore, I shall merely
observe that it was a most _recherché_ affair. The furniture of the
table, as well as the viands themselves, was of the most sumptuous
description, everything on it being of the richest and heaviest gold and
silver plate--heir-looms of the old Noblesse, from whom the Baron was
descended.
“Dinner or supper once over, we all left the table, and once more
adjourned to the back parlor, and took seats in the chairs arranged in a
triangle, the ladies, six in number, occupying those which formed the
western arm thereof. When we all were properly and comfortably seated,
there was quite a large vacant space before us, into which Vatterale
placed two chairs facing each other, and also two foot-stools covered
with damask plush-velvet close together in the other angle. He then
proceeded to lock all the doors leading into the apartment, tied all the
keys together with a piece of scarlet ribbon, and then hung them to one
of the glass prisms pendent from a large gas chandelier directly over
the centre of what I may call, not inappropriately, our circle. The jets
of this chandelier, seven in number, were all in full play under a
strong head of gas, and the room in all parts was quite as light as if
the sun shone into the windows, two of which occupied the northern end
of the parlor, both being very richly curtained, and both quite shut. I
repeat, lest trickery in what followed should be suspected by yourself,
that the seven jets of gas were brightly burning, and continued so all
the evening, except when extinguished, without the aid of _human hands_;
and as they were put out, so also were they relighted more than once.
“Having disposed of the bunch of keys, Vatterale went to both windows,
examined them closely, fastened them down securely--that is to say, the
lower sashes; for he let down one of the upper ones, and threw the
eastern external blinds wide open, and fastened them so. Of course, the
master of ceremonies had never been in that dwelling before, and of
course could not have obtained information respecting it by the usual
methods of visit and inquiry, yet, turning to the Baron, he requested
him to ring for the servant, and through the closed door bid him _remove
an ornamental iron sofa from the chamber immediately above our heads,
into the dark bed-room on the third floor_, as its presence where it
then stood would materially affect the experiments to be made!
“This request, made under such circumstances, surprised us all, but
particularly the Baron, who stared at the man who made it, as if he
regarded him as one risen from the dead; and it was, forsooth, rather a
startling circumstance, to say the least. He admitted that there was
such a room, and such a dark chamber, _au troisième_. Yet how the man
knew it, was very strange, considering that he had been in the house but
a short time, and had not left us for a moment, nor spoken a single word
to any of the servants, save on entering, to inquire if this was the
Baron’s residence.
“Scarcely had we recovered from the surprise natural on such an
occasion, than we were again made sensible that we were dealing with an
extraordinary man, for, turning to me, he begged the loan of a small
metallic coin which I had received as a present from Mr. Carr less than
ten minutes before Vatterale entered the house, and which coin was
remarkably curious and valuable on account of its high antiquity, and it
was one of the only two known to be in existence, and had been begged
for me by Mr. Carr, from his friend Blaise de Jongé, the celebrated
Eastern traveller, and had only been sent in a note to Mr. Carr, by that
eminent savant, the night previous. Having received the coin, Vatterale
placed it in his pocket, and then taking out a set of ivory tablets,
wrote a request thereon, and handed it to Madame la Marquise de la
Fronde, an elderly lady, foster sister to the Baron. The request was
altogether so singular and so novel, that the old lady immediately read
it aloud: ‘_Will Madame la Marquise have the goodness to retire to the
alcove and remove from between her feet and stockings the metallic
plates, and, separating the zinc from the copper ones, place each metal
plate with its own kind, and restore them to her feet outside the
hose!_’ The lady almost fainted with astonishment, for she averred that
no mortal knew that she wore such plates, but that she had for ten
years, and found them, by reason of the electric currents they
elaborated and imparted to her system, highly beneficial to her health.
She retired as requested, and, returning in a minute, convinced us of
the marvellous seeing faculty of the mysterious Mai, by exhibiting the
plates, which were precisely as he had described. She again retired,
and, shortly returning, resumed her seat. These preliminaries being
concluded, Vatterale brought into the open space before us a small
portmanteau, which he carried in his hand when he entered the mansion.
From this he now took a coil of wire--indeed, three small coils tied
together--also a saucer of large dimensions of stone China, or thick,
very thick porcelain, a large vial containing a colorless liquid, a box
of paste or gum, two large, and entirely empty, thin bottles--so thin
that we all looked through them at the light, as he handed them to us
for that purpose. They were as clear as the best window glass, as thin
and as brittle, apparently, as the finest crystal. From the same
receptacle he also took what looked like three rolls of paper, one very
large when unfolded, the others quite small indeed. The larger bundle he
unrolled and spread upon the floor, on the space between the chairs and
_fauteuils_. It was about three feet in diameter, and was painted in all
sorts of colors, and figures entirely nondescript. The centre of this
article was immediately that of the triangle, ‘The Symbolical figure of
the Universe, or Oneness,’ as he called it, and of course was directly
beneath the large chandelier. This done, he placed the saucer right upon
the centre of the symbolical chart, if I may so term it. Then,
unfastening the coils of wire, he laid one along the laps of the
gentlemen on one side, and fastened it by means of a link and hook to
two others, which passed in front of the other two sections of the human
trine. The wire held by the ladies (for we all were directed to grasp
the wire before us with one hand, and the hand of the next neighbor with
the other) was common iron, wound with silver foil; the one before
myself was steel, wound with gold wire; and the other was of solid gold,
wound, as were the others, at intervals, with floss silk. The ladies
grasped with the _left_ hand, and joined their right, while with the
gentlemen this order was reversed. The next proceeding on the part of
Mai, was to place half of the gum into the saucer; upon this he emptied
the vial of colorless liquid, and set fire thereto. It burned with a
clear and steady bluish flame. The gum was gradually consumed, and a
peculiar and most delightful fragrance floated through the room.
“During the burning process, the operator sat upon the stool, and gazed
fixedly and intently upon, or rather toward, the open sash, while the
rest of us were chatting merrily, and wondering what would be the result
of all these weird and curious preparations.
“I said the rest of us were merrily chatting, but must qualify that
observation by excluding from this employment one person, and that
person was--myself, for I found it utterly impossible to mingle in the
conversation with that abandon and unreserve which characterized the
others. It was altogether beyond my power to forget the tremendous
experiences of that very day, which I had undergone. A weight was on my
spirit that could not be lifted off. The ‘Ghost of Ravalette’ seemed to
be invisibly hovering over me, and although unseen, his presence seemed
to be palpably felt by me. The events at Belleville constantly obtruded
themselves before the eye of the mind; the affair at the gardener’s, the
singular result of his impromptu wager, the woman at the _Barrière_,
and, above all, the frightful occurrences at the Rue Michel le Compte,
with its sure--absolutely sure--termination on the Guillotine--the
miserable and ignominious death of D’Emprat, and the unearthly means
whereby his deed of crime--the crime a horrible murder, committed
thirty-seven years before--the unearthly and mysterious means, I repeat,
by which his guilt was brought to light--this, all this, so oppressed me
that I could not take a present interest in what was transpiring about
me. Indeed, I cared little for either Mai or his tricks--which, from
observing the method of his preparations, I had already not only
despised, but put down to the score of legerdemain--clever and
surprising, but still nothing more than legerdemain.
“How rudely this conceit was broken up, how horribly I was convinced of
my mistaken estimate of the man before us, will very soon be seen. As
for his skill in detecting the coin, the sofa, and the plates, I had
already secretly accounted. I remembered Caspar Hauser, and several
other _Sensitives_, who could detect the presence of metals by what may
be called ‘magnetic sense.’ His description of the dark bed-room _au
troisième_, was very simple, for nearly all old houses have such
chambers on that floor; this was an old house; Vatterale saw it, and
made what preliminary capital he could from his acuteness. With the
present weight of experience; with the memory of the deeds of the
mystical Ravalette still fresh in mind, of course I could not be very
highly interested in such displays of minor magic as I felt convinced
were very shortly to be made by the conjuring gentleman before us.
“Suddenly the man whose pretensions I had just been inwardly
criticising, partially raised himself from the stool, threw back his
head until his long, wavy locks fell upon his shoulders, and muttered
between his teeth, as if the word-birth was extremely painful, ‘HE IS
COMING!’ and we noticed that his face, naturally of a dingy yellow,
suddenly became of an ashen-hued paleness, and his eyes darted forth
luminous sparks that were plainly visible even amid the glare of that
brilliantly-lighted apartment; and at the same instant he placed his
right hand over the region of his heart--that is to say, over that part
where nine-and-ninety of every hundred suppose the heart to be, namely,
under the left breast. He did this as if to repress a rising pang, then
turning to his audience, he exclaimed--‘Look sharp! Be firm! be
fearless! be attentive! but if you would avoid danger, a nameless, but
great danger, stir not, move not from your seats. Grasp the cord, retain
each other’s hands, make what remarks you may deem proper, _but stir not
an inch_--a single inch from your seats, happen what may! I am going to
surprise you.’
“We all assented verbally, and not a few of the company began even to
joke him on his sorcery and magic, when we all started from our seats,
but were instantly motioned back by an anxious frown and a commanding,
magisterial wave of his right hand. The simultaneous movement on our
part, was caused by a _yell_, for such it was, that proceeded, not, as
might be anticipated, from a female, but from a Mr. Theodore Dwight, an
American gentleman, hailing from Philadelphia--and at the present time
still dwelling there.
“This person, as all who know him will certify, is no weak, puling,
nerveless man, for a man more the opposite of all this could scarce be
found in a month’s search.
“The sound which came from his lips was a shriek of terror, horror, and
agony combined, as might well be fancied to come from the throats of the
damned souls of the nether hell. It was, indeed, a paroxysm of deadly
fright. In an instant all eyes were turned toward him. He was paler than
a corpse, the very image of Death itself; his eyes protruded from their
sockets, and he trembled as if he stood before the final bar; his lips
refused to tell the cause of his distress, but his gaze was intently
fixed, with an immovable expression of horror, upon _the saucer_ on the
floor. Instinctively our eyes followed the same direction, except
Vatterale’s, who still was looking toward the open sash. With this
exception, I repeat, we all looked toward the floor, when, great God!
what a sight was there! The saucer was still there, but the two small
rolls of paper _were gone_! _They_ had disappeared, but in their stead
we distinctly saw--for, recollect, there were seven full jets of gas in
full blaze right over our heads--we saw, I reiterate, with our
eyes--physical, bodily eyes--three horrible beings, somewhat resembling
overgrown scorpions--only, that instead of claws, they had--_hands and
arms_! for all the world like those of a newly-born negro child! These
detestable _things_, for I dare not blaspheme the Great Eternal by
calling them creatures, were about five inches broad on the back, by
some eighteen in length. Their color was a deep crimson, mottled with
purple, green, and yellow stripes and spots, and they were completely
covered with scales, like those of an armadillo. Conceive, if you can,
of a tarantula or spider so large, and which--each one of them--moved
about on the very tips of twelve legs, sixteen or eighteen inches long,
and all the while whirling and twirling its _hands and arms_ (two of
each), eighteen inches long and three-fourths as large as its body, and
you will form a tolerable picture of the repulsive, unsightly, hideous
monstrosities crawling, or rather ‘stilting,’ round that saucer on the
floor.
“Each one of these loathsome _things_ had four large, protruding eyes,
closely resembling those of the monster Frog of India; but these eyes,
unlike the frog’s, were not leaden-hued; instead of this being the case,
I think no spark of fire ever shone brighter--in fact, they fairly
gleamed with what I can indicate by no other term than infernal redness;
for it seemed that at every flash they emitted the concentrated venom of
a gorgon; and beneath the fearful spell we all sat perfectly immovable
with fear.
“What our agony would have been had the accursed things ventured to move
toward us, I dare not even imagine, but they still and ever kept in the
one track, moving with orderly march around that saucer on the floor. We
felt and knew that they were living, actual realities, a genuine and
horrid trinity of _facts_, and not a mere optical illusion, or the result
of a play upon our fancies, mesmeric or otherwise. This opinion was
confirmed by the most positive and blasting testimony, for, as they
solemnly, demoniacally marched about the centre of that symbolic chart,
they left a trailing streak of greenish--_dead_, _hard_, _greenish_
ichor or pus, behind them at each revolution, and a few drops of this
fell upon the Baron’s carpet. Some months afterward he and I exchanged
letters on the events of that night, and he assured me that not a single
chemical amongst the hundreds applied for the purpose had been of the
least effect toward removing the stain. ‘The carpet has been discharged
of its colors and re-dyed, yet no dye will cover those spots!’ This was
not all, for on one of their rounds they nearly quitted the chart, and
the Baron struck at them with his foot, whereupon one of them spirted
forth a fetid liquid, which fell upon his boot, and made a mark there as
if the leather had been seared with hot iron!
“‘Talk not to me of legerdemain after this! Speak not to me of optical
illusion, or deceptive appearances, in the face of such facts as these,
for here are marks,’ wrote the Baron to me, ‘here are palpable evidences
that defy contradiction. They were made on that night, and there they
yet remain, and, albeit I cry, “Out, damned spots!” they will not, but
persist in remaining absolute confirmations of vivid, strange,
incontrovertible _facts_!’
“‘But why did you not get up, under such circumstances, all of you, and
escape from the room?’ is a very natural and perhaps not unreasonable
question, that may without impropriety be asked just here, and I reply:
For several reasons; among which a few shall be named. First, the doors
were all securely locked, and although we had seen Mai mount a chair,
and hang the keys to one of the glass pendants, yet upon looking there,
we found that they, as well as the two rolls of paper, had disappeared.
Secondly, the windows were fastened down, besides being many feet from
the ground--at least fifteen--and to leap that distance was altogether
out of the question, even had we thought of it, which we did not.
Thirdly, the earnest and solemn warning given by Vatterale before
anything took place; his assurance that if we obeyed his injunctions not
to stir--that, although we might be frightened, yet no harm could or
would befall us--acted, amidst all our terror, as a sort of stopper upon
any precipitate movement, after the first shock was over.
“We could not quit the room provided even all the doors had been flung
wide open. Hast never heard tell of the _fascination_ of Danger? If so,
then know that it was upon us in all its terrible force and power. We
were bound, chained, rooted, riveted to the spot, by a potentiality
never to be questioned, never to be despised, for its might, when once
it fastens upon its victim, is merciless, gripping, stern and
unrelenting. We felt that to stir, was to incur the hazard of an
unknown, unguessed-at danger. ALL were fascinated by terror; to move was
to add ten-fold to its power! It was a feeling akin to that experienced
by the native of Ind, who roused from his mid-day slumber, wakes to feel
the clammy folds of the cobra-capello, the dreadful hooded serpent of
his clime, slowly writhing and winding beneath his garments about his
naked flesh; and who realizes, as his heart stops beating and his blood
runs icily with agony, and as the great big beaded drops of cold sweat
ooze out from every pore, that to stir, to breathe, to even quiver under
the pressure of his mortal fear, is certain, irrevocable, positive
death--knowing as he does, that nor man nor beast hath ever yet lived a
single hour after the fangs of the hooded snake have once opened a
passage for the entrance of the King of Terrors!
“And such was the pall that rested upon the eighteen persons in that
room, as the detestable trinity moved slowly around that saucer on the
floor; their eyes--their great, horny, bulging eyes--all the while
scintillating and flashing with the very essence of intense
malignity--malignity as of a devil! The female portion of the company I
fear may never recover from the shock that night received. They did not
faint, or scream, or swoon, as perhaps it might have been suspected they
would under such diabolic circumstances, simply, however, for the reason
that the tension of soul and nerve was altogether too severe and great
to permit, even for an instant, the reaction which is an absolute
prerequisite to relief by or through the methods indicated.
“Probably the length of time that elapsed from the shriek of our
comrade, till the final disappearance of the three monsters, did not
exceed three minutes, yet in that brief space we had undergone years of
terror.
“Truly, the real lapse of time is not to be reckoned by the beats of the
clock, but only by sensations and heart-throbs. Mai, at the termination
of the time specified, rose from his stool, took a small basket from his
portmanteau, and then fearlessly seizing the _things_, one at a time, he
carefully doubled up their legs under them, and placed them in it. Then
taking the two crystal bottles already alluded to, he placed them
lengthwise on the chart, with their necks and apertures facing each
other, after which he resumed his seat upon the foot-stool, addressing
no word or sign to the spectators of his movements. And now it began to
grow dark! The jets of gas appeared to burn less clear and fully, just
as if some one was slowly turning the cocks which let it on, with a
gradual movement. In a little while the room was darkened, though not
exactly dark, for there was still a dim half light--a sort of semi-blue,
semi-dull red, misty radiance, just sufficient to enable us to
distinguish objects vaguely, indistinct and dimly.
“‘Stir not! fear not!’ said the thick, husky voice of Vatterale; and
before we could reply, a scene commenced, such as it hath seldom fallen
to man’s lot to witness.
“‘Allow me to explain a modern mystery,’ said Vatterale, ‘but first let
me remove your fears. Look!’
“Scarcely had he spoken these words, than the room was suddenly
illuminated, as if the very air was aglow with the most brilliant light,
and we saw the two bottles quite plainly. As we gazed upon these, there
came from one the appearance of an enormous serpent, which proceeded to
coil itself up, until its bulk thrice exceeded that of both the bottles.
Then there came still another, and another, until no less than twelve
lay there, coiled up in a loathsome pile; but as the last one emerged
from one bottle, the first one entered the other, until all had
disappeared as they had come.
“‘I will now show you that you cannot always trust your own senses,’
said Vatterale, ‘nor account for what you see;’ and he straightway
emptied the basket, and broke the bottles. All three were empty! Not a
sign of snake or scorpion was there!
“‘Again, I will show you a curious thing. You will please call a
servant, seat her on one of those chairs, and bid her on a wager hold a
skein of silk while it is being wound--merely to keep her
attention--that is all. But,’ and he spoke very earnestly, ‘whatever
you see or hear, I beg you will not utter a single word.’
“This was assented to; a skein of silk was ordered, but not till the
gaslight had displaced the other.
“‘It will be just seventeen minutes before the girl is ready,’ said Mai;
‘and while waiting, I will _demonstrate a fallacy_. The creatures you
have beheld to night are real, but ephemeral--they are Will-creations,
and perish when the power ceases to act which called them into being. As
proof of what I say, Behold!’
“From the floor in the eastern corner of the room there straightway
begun to arise a light mist, which increased in bulk until a ball of
vapor, three feet in diameter, floated in the air. Thus it remained for
a minute; and then, right before our eyes, began to condense and change
its shape, until at the end of four minutes, it had assumed a human
semblance--but, Heavens! what a caricature!
“At first it was a mere vapory outline, but it rapidly condensed and
consolidated, until what looked like a hideous, half-naked, bow-legged,
splay-footed monster stood before us. Its height was less than three
feet; its chest and body were nearly that in width; its legs were not
over eight inches long; its arms were longer than its entire body; its
head was gigantic; and it had no neck whatever, while from its horrible
head there hung to the very ground the appearance of a tangled mass of
wire-like worms. Its mouth was a fearful-looking red gash, extending to
where ears should have been, but were not. Eyes, nose, cheeks, chin,
lips or forehead, there were none whatever. Do not imagine that this
creature was merely an appearance; it was not, for although born of
vapor, in five minutes it became solid as iron, demonstrating the fact
by stalking heavily across the floor right into the centre of the open
space between us--the chains being dropped as it approached--where it
stood, slowly swaying to and fro, as if its heart was heavy.
“‘Show your quality,’ said Mai to the thing. ‘I will,’ it hissed, and
straightway proceeding toward a table, it stood by it a few minutes, and
it became apparent that it was charging the wood with something from
itself, for soon the table began to turn, to tip, to move, to rise and
float in the air, precisely as is done in spiritual circles.
“‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will please act just as if that before
you was a human spirit, invisible to you, and desirous of imparting
information. I dare say you will be surprised at the results. You see
already that it is a capital table-mover, and I beg you to test its
mental and physical powers also--for I assure you there is nothing to
fear, now that I give you leave to break the silence--which was quite
essential in the first part of the curious experiment.’
“Thus assured, several of us asked the thing to show us what it could
do. Whereupon it made motions as if it wanted to write. Paper and pencil
being placed upon the table, it seized the pencil with its long
claw-like fingers, and its hand flew over the page like lightning, and
in ten seconds it finished, and striking the table three heavy blows
with its fist, signified that it had finished; whereupon Mr. D----
reached for the sheet, and read therefrom one of the most tender
messages conceivable, from a dead mother to a living son. Even the hand
writing was a perfect _fac-simile_ of his mother’s; the name--Lucy--was
correct, and certain dear and peculiar phrases, used by her when alive,
were given with minute precision and fidelity; as, for instance, ‘sweet
one, mine,’ instead of ‘my sweet one.’ Mr. D---- turned pale. ‘Is it
possible I have been so imposed upon--so horribly deceived?’ said he,
for he was a devout follower of the modern thaumaturgy.
“Several further tests, equally successful and decisive, were then given
by this ghostly thing, both by writing, tipping, rapping, and the
production of beautiful phantom hands, faces, flowers, and other
objects, many of which were not only singular but magnificent. Probably
thousands of persons have seen the curious pencil drawings, executed by
‘mediums,’ and which are said to be portraits of ‘Spiritual
flowers’--for most certainly they resemble nothing growing on this
earth. Well, in less than five minutes the horrible thing there at the
table, the eyeless monster, executed thirteen such--and they would pass
current as splendid specimens of ‘Spirit art.’
“‘Now,’ said Vatterale, ‘for something else.’ And then addressing the
thing, he said: ‘You will now render yourself viewless, and show what
you can do. And first let us have some music.’ Then turning to the
company, he said: ‘Real spirits love the light, but such as _that_
invariably act most efficiently in the dark--for then they have the
advantage of the elements condensed upon their forms--a semi-material
investiture--and can come in direct contact with material substances,
which, in the case of real spirits, is exceedingly difficult of
accomplishment.’
“During this speech, our attention was diverted from the incarnated to
the incarnator--for it must not be forgotten that the entire phenomena
exhibited by this wondrous personage, were the creatures of his
conscious will, brought into being and again cast out by a thought, and
according to a _known and transferable formula_. True, there were others
in whom this creative faculty existed, but then such persons either
exercised the power involuntarily through the mechanical processes of
mind and will, or else they are but the proxies of the Larvæ. When he
ceased speaking the monster was gone from our sight, but not from our
hearing, for Mai gently waved his hand, and as he did so there came to
us the softest, gentlest, sweetest, and the most soul-stirring strains
of music that ever fell on human hearing. Above, below, around, now
here, now there, close at hand, and then afar off, it sounded; and the
only comparison I can make is, that it sounded like a solemn requiem
chaunted by angels over the perished form of what was once a god--the
tones were so pathetic, so solemn, so supremely sorrow-freighted--
reminding one of the plaintive
“‘Huhm, meleagar malooshe,
Huhm meleagar, ma-looshe,’
only that it was ten-fold more profound, and stirred depths the other
could never reach.
“This strange music was a perfect corroboration of the theory advanced
by the Italian Count at the séance before Napoleon, already mentioned;
for, allowing that the being who made it was a real and independent
existence, it was impossible for such conceptions to exist in it, for
the reason that none but a mighty soul could create them, and the thing
itself was exceedingly, revoltingly low in the scale of organization.
But, on the other hand, if the thing were the creature of Mai’s will, it
was conceivable that it vocally expressed his unuttered thought, itself
totally unconscious of either the music or its meaning.
“It ceased. It still remained invisible, and Mai proposed that Count de
M---- should hold one end of an accordion, while the thing invisibly
held and played upon the other. This was assented to, and the
instrument, bottom up, was held at arm’s length, directly beneath the
light. _It was placed on_, in masterly style, while in that position.
It, as well as a guitar, harp and piano, were played on when no one was
near them, and nothing to be seen; and then, at the command of the
arch-magician, the whole performance was repeated by the terrific thing
in its perfectly visible form.
“Presently, a knock at the door told us that the servant sent for had
arrived, with the silk in her hand. She was admitted; the thing retired
from view.
“‘Marie,’ said the Baron, ‘a wager is laid that one of these gentlemen
cannot unwind a skein of silk which you are to hold, both of you being
blindfolded. I wager that it can be done. If I win, you shall have three
days to visit your family, besides something to carry to the old people
and the little ones. Now, you must not laugh or speak while the silk is
being wound; if you do I lose. Will you try?’
“‘Certainly,’ replied the girl; ‘and you shall see that I will not
laugh. Oh, _papa, maman_, I shall have three days! _Mon Dieu!_ but it is
a fine thing!’ And, taking the seat offered, she suffered the silk to be
placed across her wrists, and be blindfolded by the Baroness.
“This having been done, Mr. D----, at a sign from Vatterale, took the
end of the cord, and began slowly to unwind it.
“‘And now begin,’ said the latter, speaking toward where the thing had
disappeared. The command was heard. It came forth, touched the girl’s
hand, and instantly she was thrown into a profound trance, whence
another touch revived her, but not to wakeful consciousness. Instead of
this, she rose, threw down the silk, approached several musical
instruments in succession, and played upon them most exquisitely. The
thing touched her head, and she made love in the most tender terms to
three gentlemen in succession, declaring to each in turn that he was her
‘eternal affinity,’ and had been so from the foundation of the world.
“Again it touched her; and, suddenly changing her manner, she declaimed
in lofty strain. Now she was Charlotte Corday, then Maximillian the
Incorruptible; again, she was the Maid of Orleans, and then a simple
Indian maiden. Now she was Malibran, and sung divinely; anon, she was a
strong-minded woman, and talked about the Divine creative work of
woman;--about love--that man had made it special when it should be
general, and, therefore, free. She raved about the Bible, called it
excellent soft bark; called the Saviour the Nazarene; spoke of the Deity
as the Great Positive Mind; declared she was His private secretary;
prated about Starnos and ’Cor, Summer Lands, Gupturion, Mornia,
divorces, and how to get them; progress and humbug, milky ways, and the
people of Jupiter, with a hundred other follies, but which she, unlike
her exemplars, for the time believed. The scene continued for at least
two hours, at the end of which time Mai dismissed the thing, and
restored the girl, who was totally oblivious of all that had occurred.
She received sundry pieces of gold from those present, and left the
room, doubtless desiring to unwind more silk at the same rate.
“‘I will now show you something equally curious,’ said Mai, ‘and,
perhaps, quite as interesting as anything you have yet beheld. Look!’
“We did so. Simultaneously, and from all parts of the room, there now
arose, as from the floor, innumerable minute globules of various-colored
fire--red, green, blue, purple, scarlet, gold, silver, crimson, white
and violet--leaping, flashing, dancing and frisking about, as if endowed
with sensuous, joyous gaiety. Apparently, there were thousands of them,
all moving in disorder through the air, now lighting on the
picture-frames suspended from the wall, now collecting in great masses
in front of the splendid mirrors, and, anon, gliding along the floor,
under our seats, through our feet, over the chairs, and about the
carpet, as if in the very wantonness of sport, their every motion being
accompanied by a hissing sound, in kind, though not in volume, like that
emitted by an ascending rocket as it rushes through the air. Presently,
they formed themselves into crowns, just such as I had seen years
before, in that same Paris, float over and crown Napoleon at the behest
of an Italian Count. In an instant I associated the two circumstances,
and, turning to the magician, was about to speak, when, as if divining
my purpose, he nodded to me, and said aloud--
“‘I told you we should meet again! Be patient--this night must pass.
Accept the present I left for you at your hotel, and do not forget that
we shall _meet again_!’ and he became silent as before, while the
company scarcely knew what to make of this abrupt, and apparently
meaningless speech.
“I had solved one problem. Vatterale and the Count were one and the same
person; but who and what were the other two--Miakus and Ravalette?
“The fiery crowns concluded the exhibition, and at a late hour the
company separated, and each sought his pillow.”
CHAPTER VI.
ARRIVAL OF THE EDITOR.
“Too excited to sleep, I threw myself upon the sofa, and turned the
strange series of events over in my mind. Two things were absolutely
certain, nay, three--1st, That neither Ravalette, Vatterale, nor the
Italian Count, were men as are other men; 2d, that not one of the
company suspected this fact; and 3d, that myself was the object, sole
and alone, of these extraordinary visitations. Above and beyond all
these, it was plain that my destiny was rapidly approaching a crisis,
and that the Stranger (mentioned in the legend), as well as Dhoula Bel,
were still influencing me for purposes which I could not divine to their
full extent. I had already become a Rosicrucian, had passed through five
degrees, had visited the Orient, and was about to go again, had learned
many dark and solemn mysteries, been instructed in several degrees of
magic, knew all about the Elixir of life, the power of will, the art of
reading others’ destinies, of constructing and using magic mirrors, and
how to discover mines of precious metal, and had deeply regretted that
the terrible oath whereby the true Rosicrucian binds himself never to
seek wealth for himself, and never to accept riches as the price of the
exercise of his power, prevented me from availing myself of its
advantages. I knew that on the altar of knowledge I had sacrificed all
the deeper interests of my nature. I knew that my heart yearned for
woman’s love--that she held one portion of my soul captive at times, but
never filled it--that there was a possibility of escaping what I
dreaded, could I meet and mingle with a certain soul in whose body ran
no drop of Adamic blood; and I almost resolved to abandon all hope,
perform the part required of me by my tempters of Belleville, the
Tuilleries, and Boston, when suddenly I remembered the paper that
Ravalette had placed in my hand, as also the present left for me by
Vatterale, but, resolving to omit all care concerning them till morning,
at length I succeeded in falling into an uneasy slumber, from which I
awoke late on the following morning to find that you, my dear friend
[the Editor], had just arrived from Alexandria, and had called upon
me.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE GRAND SECRET?
It now devolves upon the Editor of these pages to complete the narrative
of Beverly, his friend.
I had just reached Paris from Marseilles, where I had arrived a few days
before, by way of Malta, from Alexandria. On reaching Paris it was my
intention to rest but one night there, and then pursue my way _via_
Rouen, in Normandy, to Diéppe and England, and thence home to America.
Like all other travellers, I desired to spend a week in Paris, but
business prevented, consequently I made preparations to leave the famous
city on the day following my arrival; but I resigned myself to this
necessity with all the more fortitude, for the reason that by so doing I
should be able to retain the company of a very pleasant gentleman, whose
society I had enjoyed continually from Cairo, where we first met, to
Paris, and which I might, by making no stop in the latter place,
continue to enjoy all the way home, as he intended to start just so soon
as he rejoined his daughter, who, for about three years had been
receiving her education in Paris, and whom he was about to conduct to
his home--a newly-purchased one in New York.
The history of Mr. Im Hokeis and his adventures, as related to me on
our journey, are so well worth repeating that I shall give a short
abstract, even at the risk of enlarging this chapter.
“I was born,” said he, “on the banks of the Caspian Sea, of the family
of Hokeis--a sacred family, in whom was invested the highest order of
Priesthood, and on whom devolved the care of the sacred fire, for we
were Guebres, and the fire must never be extinguished, nor had it been,
so say our records, for many thousand years, for Religion with us is
quite a different thing from what it is among the men of Islam, India,
Rome, or the West. We pride ourselves upon the purity of our faith, and
its superiority to all that is professed by the children of Adam, quite
as much as we do our Pedigree from _Ish_, the great founder of our race
and a powerful pre-Adamite king and conqueror.”
I cannot now afford time to repeat the arguments by which Im Hokeis
demonstrated the startling proposition that there _were_ other people
living on earth besides those who claimed Adam as their founder. All
this may be found elsewhere.[9] He said that he was destined from birth
to be chief priest of the Faith, and had married a woman of his tribe
and rank, at the early age of seventeen. Near the time he was about
being ordained, war had broken out between the Guebres and their Persian
tyrants. Himself and wife were captured, taken to Herat, and there
condemned to lose their eyes, from which horrible fate they were
rescued by a member of the British Embassy, with whom they remained for
nearly three years, by which time they had mastered the English
language. While in the service of the minister, Hokeis had the good
fortune to save his life, in consequence of which a friendship sprung up
between them so strong, that when the Embassy returned to Britain the
two Guebres went with it. Arrived in London, Hokeis received an
appointment as interpreter, and soon accumulated means, after which he
entered into a direct trade with Persia, and although, during the nine
years in which he was engaged therein, heaven had not sent him any
children, yet it had blessed him with abounding wealth.
[9] The argument proving the existence of the human race thousands of
years anterior to the date of Adam, may be found in “Pre-Adamite Man.”
By Griffin Lee. New York. S. Tousey. 1863.
At length, in the thirteenth year of their married life, their prayer
was answered, and it became evident that God was about to send them a
child. He did, and a beautiful girl was born, but the eyes of her mother
were closed in death at the moment it first saw the light.
One day the nurse, who was a relative of Hokeis’ wife, was wheeling the
child around the walks of Hampstead Heath, when they wandered within the
precincts of a gipsy encampment, and the girl was persuaded to have her
own and the child’s fortune told. The complexion and features of the
twain led to remarks on their nationality, and by skillful manœuvering
the gipsy woman ascertained that the couple before her were Guebres by
birth, and had been by religion. The mummery over and the fee paid, the
girl went home with her charge. They were followed, and on that very
night, while the nurse slept, the child was stolen. Search was made for
the gang of gipsies--the abduction having been clearly traced to them,
by reason of a note left behind by the robber, stating that the child
would be well cared for--but in vain, for on the very next day the whole
gang, thirty in number, had sailed in a packet from the London Docks,
for America.
Many years rolled by, when one day, as the disconsolate father was
walking in the garden of the same house whence the child was stolen, he
was accosted by an old beldame, who asked him what he would pay in gold
in return for information respecting his child. It is needless to
narrate the successive steps taken. Suffice it that within twenty-four
hours the father and the gipsy were on the ocean, going as fast as steam
would carry them toward the Western World.... The child, now a regal
woman, was found, and father and daughter lived with each other for a
time in New York, where a fine property had been bought; for the old
gentleman so liked the New World that he determined to settle there for
life, after his daughter had been properly cultured in Europe, whither
he soon took her, and then, after transmitting the bulk of his fortune
to America, went on a final visit to his people in Persia, his friends
and co-religionists in the East. I had met with him as already stated,
when on his return from Egypt to France.
This brings us to the night of my arrival in Paris. It being impossible
to join his child that night, Hokeis and myself drove to a hotel in the
Palaise Royale, and were at the satisfactory end of a supper, when a
person who was totally unknown to either of us entered the _salle à
manger_, and, making a profound obeisance to us both, said: “_Salute!_ I
come to tell you, Im Hokeis, that you will not quit Paris to-morrow. But
at the hour of four you will take your daughter to the house that is
last but one on the left ascending the Boulevart de Luxembourg. You will
ask me no questions, but will obey. My authority I thus give you,” and
he whispered three words in the ear of Hokeis, that caused the latter to
start as if he had been shot. _He had received the secret countersign of
the priests of fire!_ Then turning to me, he said, “You will go early in
the morning to the Hotel Fleury. There you will find Beverly, your
friend, join him; go where he goes, and quit him not for an instant for
the next two days--_his salvation depends upon it!_ Now I go. Forget not
the words of _the Stranger_.”
I was thunderstruck. Hokeis and I talked much that night before we
slept. What we spoke of is easily to be conceived.
This brings me to my next meeting with Beverly, whose fortunes we will
now follow.
It will be remembered that Ravalette had given him a paper just before
they parted in Belleville, and that Vatterale had also left something
for him at his hotel. Bearing this in mind, observe what followed.
In a bold, strong hand was written these words in the note placed by
Ravalette in the hands of Beverly when they parted in Belleville--“When
you need me--when you are ready to become one of us--when you have given
up all hope of ever probing the mystery of my existence and your
own--then seek me in _the house that is last but one on the left
ascending the Boulevart de Luxembourg_.--Ravalette.”
The identical direction, and almost in the very words given by the
mysterious personage to Hokeis, in the hotel of the Palais Royale on the
previous night. The circumstance made a great impression on my mind, but
prudence forbade all mention of it to Beverly. He seemed quite glad of
this opportunity of solving the strange riddle, and, to my great
delight, begged and insisted that I should spend the day with him, and
in the evening we would investigate the subject together; and that I
readily consented, may be easily imagined. There were several motives
prompting me in this affair--curiosity, friendship, and a vague hope of
baffling what Beverly regarded as his doom. Those who have read
carefully what has here been written, will remember that Beverly had
convinced me that there was more in the strange legend, regarding the
king, the princess, the riddle, the murder, and the curse and its
fulfillment, than the majority of people would be willing to concede. In
short, I was decidedly inclined to believe in Dhoula Bel and the other
doomed one, but I had no faith whatever in either Miakus, Ravalette, the
Italian Count, or Vatterale. I did not believe all these names belonged
to one person, and I finally settled down on the following theory, point
by point:--1st, That there was in existence a society, having its
head-quarters in Paris, the members of which were practisers of Oriental
magic and necromancy, in which they were most astonishingly expert. 2d,
That the organization had for its object, not the attainment of wealth
or political position, but abstract knowledge, and the absolute rule of
the world through the action and influence of the brotherhood upon the
crowned heads and officials of the world. 3d, That this association was
governed by a master-mind, and that mind was Ravalette’s. 4th, That this
society had cultivated mesmerism to a degree unapproachable by all the
world besides. That they had exhausted ordinary clairvoyance, and
eagerly sought a brain which would admit of the most thorough
magnetization, and whose natural tendency was toward the mystical,
transcendental and weird, yet strong, strong-willed, logical, emulative,
daring and ambitious; and that, to discover such, their agents had
traversed all four continents of the globe; and that finally they had
heard of Beverly, whose fame as a seer was world-wide; that they had
found him, and, beyond doubt, had learned the strange particulars of his
life, the legend, and his hope. They had seen him, and at once decided
that, under their wonderful manipulation, he could be placed in a
magnetic slumber many degrees more profound than is possible in one case
in five millions, and reach a degree of mental lucidity and
psycho-vision that would not only surpass all that the earth had yet
witnessed in that direction, from Budha, Confucius, Zoroaster, and the
Oracles of Greece, down to the days of Boehme and the Swede, since when
there has been no clairvoyant really worthy of the name. True, there
were semi-lucides in abundance, but these either were only capable of
reading or noting material objects, and, at best, repeating the thoughts
of other men, or giving the contents of books as original matter,
heaven-derived--as the self-styled “great (_sic_) American seer” gave
forth the contents of a volume written by Pierpont Greeves, mixed and
muddled up with a few really sublime thoughts taken from the minds of
his scribe, his mesmerizer, and the highly intellectual coterie who
gathered round him during his séances. 5th, They knew that, unless
Beverly’s will accorded with their desire, it would be useless to
attempt to gain their ends through him; and hence, all their efforts by
playing the shining bait of magic for the purpose of inducing him to
consent to anything in order to gain their power. Hence, too, their gift
of the secrets of the Magic Mirror, the Elixir of Life, of Youth, of
Love, and a score of others equally curious and invaluable to the
student of the soul. 6th, It was clear that, while these men knew much
of the Rosicrucian system, they were not in full harmony or accord with
that brotherhood.
Thus I reasoned, and it was easy to account for the scenes in the Boston
office and at Beverly’s home--the apparent immunity Miakus enjoyed from
the effects of the fire, which burnt the chair but not his thigh, I
accounted for on the ground that chemistry helped him, as it had a score
of “fire-kings” beside.
Thus far, I felt that my theory covered the whole ground of this clever
fraternity; but when I recurred to the scenes witnessed by no less than
eighteen people at the house of the Baron, I confess, candidly, that it
utterly failed. Still, I totally rejected all supernaturalism as
connected with the affair, and, attributing the whole to expert
trickery, I determined to lay a trap to catch the performers in the very
act, and flattered myself that it would be successful. “Ho! ho! Mr.
Vatterale, I’ll show you!” I exclaimed, as I shook Beverly’s hand, and
leaving him, to bathe, dress, and breakfast alone, I hurried out,
ostensibly to go to the post-office, but, in reality, to visit the
head-quarters of the Paris Police, which I did, and, when there, briefly
but clearly stated my belief that a friend of mine was being victimized
in the manner stated; to all of which the chief official lent an
attentive ear, caused my _proces verbal_ to be recorded, directed me how
to proceed so as not to alarm the suspected parties, and promised to
have a _posse_ on hand very close to the house on the Boulevart de
Luxembourg by the hour named. On my way back to the Hotel Fleury, I
dropped in to see if Hokeis was home, but found only a note, informing
me that he had gone to Versailles after his daughter. I rejoined
Beverly.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BOULEVART DE LUXEMBOURG.
Impatient as I was for the hour to arrive, in which all my doubts might
be forever solved, yet Beverly was still more so. No condemned man ever
wished more ardently for the moment when, by the halter or the glaive,
the grand secret should be revealed to him, than did my friend for that
in which he should know the best or the worst for him.
Three o’clock found us within a stone’s throw of the house designated as
the rendezvous, and the three or four little shingles in front of it
with “Appartements à louer,” “Chambres garni,” and “Cabinets meubles,”
told at once that it was one of those middle-class establishments where
a person might hire rooms and live undisturbed for a whole lifetime,
provided the rent was duly paid.
Into the square, paved court of this house we entered, and before the
least inquiry was made, the _concierge_ came out of his crib, saluted us
respectfully, and said: “You are two of the gentlemen expected here
to-day by the occupant of the second floor. Please ascend. You will find
him in the first room to the left,” and the old fellow hobbled back to
his nest, and instantly began pegging away at the heel of a shoe, which
he was engaged in healing and heeling when we entered the court.
Following his directions, we ascended a broad, winding stairway of
stone, and found ourselves on a landing. From this landing one stairway
ascended, and another led to the court below. At the further end, but on
the side, was a door, and at the hither end another. The house itself
stood quite isolated from all others, and the windows of the rooms, it
was clear, must overlook the boulevart and a lane crossing it at right
angles. We entered the first door, and found ourselves in a very
plainly-furnished, large, square room, having two windows at the end,
two more on the side, a cupboard, recess, and two large folding doors,
both standing wide open, so that, finding no person in the first room,
we passed through them into the second, but still failed to see or even
hear the least indication that their occupant was anywhere around. I was
glad of this, for it gave opportunity for an examination of the
premises; therefore calling the _concierge_, I asked him the name,
occupation, and period of occupancy of his second-floor tenant, to which
he very readily responded, by saying that his tenant was a foreign
scholar named Elarettav; that he was wealthy, had lived there five
years, and saw very little company, never dined or eat in the house, and
in short was a very fine man, indeed--he paid two louis a month for
porter’s fees! The _concierge_ left, and I carefully remarked the place,
and found the floor and ceiling was of stone, as are all French houses.
The cupboard was low, narrow, and filled with wine bottles and glasses,
far more like a student’s quarters than a grave philosopher’s like
Ravalette, if, indeed, that personage was the same described as
Elarettav by the porter. The recess was small and simple, and contained
nothing but a cot bedstead and its appropriate furniture. I concluded
that there was no preparation for magic, if any was intended, and as
this notion passed through my mind, the clock struck four, and we heard
the footsteps of a man in the other room, notwithstanding the door was
not seen to open. We went to that other room, and, “Ravalette, as I
live!” exclaimed Beverly; and, sure enough, there stood, calmly smiling,
just such an old gentleman as I had heard described.
“You have sought, and you have found me! I hope you will profit by the
finding,” said he to Beverly; “and you, sir, have done well to accompany
your friend,” addressing me in a tone slightly insulting, and all the
more so from being slight. It was evident that he did not relish my
presence in the least, and as for me I had no sooner set eyes on my man
than I felt assured of the truth of my theory, and that I stood in
presence of one of the ablest intellects on earth--a man capable of all
that had been attributed to him, and one who would reach his goal and
carry his point at all hazards, even if in doing so it were necessary to
sail through seas of human blood. I flatter myself on my ability to
measure men and to circumvent deliberate villainy, and no sooner had I
heard the tones of Ravalette’s voice, and seen the clear-cut features of
his face, than I at once suspected some sort of foul play was on the
tapis, and which I determined to thwart, even if I had to give him the
solid contents of a couple of Derringers and a Colt’s revolver, which I
had taken care to provide myself with before venturing into what might
have been the den of unscrupulous wretches, for aught I knew to the
contrary. It may be that Ravalette read my thoughts, for he certainly
looked uneasy, but said nothing, for at that moment the _concierge_
threw open the door and announced “_Monsieur Hokeis et fille_,” and my
travelling companion and his daughter--the most voluptuous and glorious
looking woman that I had ever beheld in any land, not even excepting the
glowing beauties of Beyrout or Stamboul--entered the room.
Ravalette seemed to have been expecting them, and did not appear at all
surprised at their uninvited presence; but the effect upon Hokeis and
his daughter, the very moment they beheld his face, was perfectly
electrical, yet totally dissimilar, for Hokeis instantly threw himself
upon his knees before Ravalette, bent his head, and folded his hands in
an attitude half supplicatory, half adoring, and said:
“Oh, dread genius of the Fire and the Flame! do I see thee here? Alas! I
am a wretched man, but thou art powerful and will forgive! My defection
was not my choice, but that of accident, and in the religion of Isauvi
have I found more peace than ever in thy temples of the temples of
Astarte!”
My brain fairly reeled beneath the tremendous rush of emotions,
conflicting as a whirlwind, excited by this extraordinary scene; while,
as for Beverly, his face was like an ashen cloth, his limbs were like an
aspen.
The next moment these emotions underwent an entire change, for the
woman, who appeared not to have taken the least notice of her father’s
action or speech, went straight up to Ravalette, placed her jewelled
hand upon his shoulder, looked him straight in the eye, as if she would
wither and crush him at a glance, and in a voice low, but clear and
deep, said: “And so, thou fiend, we meet again! Art going to essay more
of thy tricks and magic spells? Art going to set more snares for the
daughter of Im Hokeis? Wretch, thou art foiled again! What, tell me,
what! thou fiend of Darkness, couldst thou gain by persecuting me now,
as in my loneliness? What wouldst thou gain by seeing me wedded--to ‘no
matter whom’--as you said, so long as I was wedded? Why have you haunted
me, asleep and awake, tempting, driving me toward a marriage? What hadst
thou to gain? You do not answer. Well, I will answer for you:
“Do you remember a day, long years ago, when I was a child, beyond the
great salt sea, that you came to an old man’s door and craved shelter
for the night? Well, I do. You were received by the generous Indian. You
shared his table, his pipe, and his cider. Then, as you sat by the fire,
you noticed me, and must needs tell my fortune. You did so, and truly.
You said that in one month from that day I should meet a sad-hearted
youth, weary, weeping, miserable, lonely; that he would engage my heart,
and that I would easily be led to love and wed him; but that _if_ I did
so, black clouds would lower over us, and that our morn of love would
bring a noon of dislike, an evening of sorrow, and a night of crime,
ignominy and death. You said that my union with any other man would
bring all that could render life desirable. I believed you, for a
hundred things that you foretold came to pass. At length, three weeks of
the month elapsed; and one night I had a dream, and in it I saw you, and
the young man, whom in the body I had never yet beheld. In that dream
you repeated all that you had said before, and then you disappeared; but
your hateful presence had no sooner quit me than there came a glorious
being, robed in majesty and beauty, who bade me heed you not, but to
love this poor creature whose shadow was then before me--to love, but
not confess it till the proper time should come;--that if I wedded
another than him I might be happy, but that if I married him I would
redeem a soul from a terrible fate. He bade me resist you, and to
encourage the youth, cheer up his heart, and tell him not to despair,
_for he might be happy yet_. He also”--but she had not time to say
another word, for Beverly rushed forward, pushed Ravalette away, seized
the woman’s hand, kissed it, and exclaimed:
“‘Evlambéa!’
“‘Beverly!’”
And in an instant they were locked in each other’s arms.
It was indeed the friend of long-gone years, and yet I had not even
suspected this fact, even after hearing the story of Im Hokeis and the
gipsy adventure.
I felt that this drama was getting deeper every minute, but had not time
to think of one half of what was occurring ere the door was opened by
no less a personage than the Commissary of Police, followed by two of
the _garde de ville_, while, through the open door, I saw that the
stairs and landing were literally crowded with _gens d’arms_.
The drama was getting very serious.
Ravalette stood unmoved, and smiled, saying:
“Your trouble is in vain, monsieur! You are not wanted here, and will
immediately return whither you came, while monsieur here, who engaged
you to come, is at liberty to remain.”
This cool speech disconcerted the official a little, but he replied: “It
is my duty to protect all who demand it for themselves or others.”
“True; but in this case no act has been committed or designed that could
in the least afford just ground for such a demand. Still, as you are
here, why here you may remain until you are satisfied of the truth of my
remarks. Pray be seated.”
The term “intensely dramatic” would not begin to give an adequate notion
of the “situation” at this particular juncture of affairs. The only
person who was completely at ease was Ravalette. As for Hokeis, the
brush of Michael Angelo and Raphael combined could not have done justice
to his portrait, nor have limned one-hundredth part of the intense and
overwhelming astonishment and horror depicted on his countenance at what
he beheld and heard. No two persons looked at the affair in the same
light, nor regarded the Enigma from the same point of view, neither did
they comprehend each other, but all were comprehended by the great
master before them.
For a while an unpleasant silence reigned, which was at length, much to
my surprise, broken by my Rosicrucian friend, Beverly, who, looking
Ravalette straight in the eye, said:
“Whoever you are, I forgive you for the attempt to prevent myself, a son
of Adam, wedding with this woman, Evlambéa, the Bright-shining Daughter
of Ish; I forgive you for persecuting her toward a marriage with
another, which marriage must have doomed me to a fate I have for
centuries shrunk from; I forgive you all the woe you have caused me,
because gratitude for what you have done for me exacts this; and because
I suspect your agent saved my life when the retort burst in Boston, when
I was repeating La Brière’s experiment with phosphorus. Through you, or
such as you, I have learned priceless secrets. The mystery of Magic
Mirrors I am grateful for being taught. The secret of ages--the art of
making the Elixir of Life, whereof whosoever shall drink shall never
know decay, but so long as once a year he shall quaff thereof, may enjoy
perpetual youth--I am inexpressibly thankful for. I shall never use this
secret for that purpose, but five of the seven ingredients, when
mingled, constitute what chemistry has sought in vain; and bequeathing
this portion of the formulæ to my friend, and through him to the medical
world, I shall atone for my few faults by giving life to thousands.
“Freely, without force or compulsion, I solemnly promise to sleep the
sleep of Sialam before I quit this house, and in it will truly answer
you all I may be able to, on condition that you previously clear up the
mystery surrounding yourself; thus voluntarily giving you what an age of
fraud would not enable you to obtain, you first solemnly promising, by
Him by whose will you exist, be you man or demon, not to influence me,
either now or when I shall slumber.”
A gleam of sudden joy flashed from the eyes of the strange being before
us. He looked like a bridegroom in the fullness of his joy, and clasping
both hands--pale, thin, bluish-white hands--upon his breast, he looked
up and said:
“So be it! I solemnly bind myself, by the most terrible oath
conceivable, that I accept all your conditions.”
Then going to the recess mentioned before, he brought thence a
semi-circular screen, a little taller than a man, and about four feet in
diameter. This he requested the Commissary of Police to examine, who did
so, and declared it to be nothing but a common bedside screen.
“You are right! it _is_ nothing but a bedside screen. Such as it is,
however, I request you to select for it any spot you choose upon the
stone floor of either of these rooms. I shall want to go behind it; and
that you may not harbor a thought of an intended evasion on my part, I
request that you call your men into the room and give them orders to
_shoot me_ if I attempt to pass them!”
“Just as you please, monsieur! Pierre, call the guard.”
In obedience to this summons, the _corps de garde_ filed into the room,
twenty-seven strong, and as soon as the last man entered, the officer
addressed them, saying, as he pointed to Ravalette, “This gentleman
thinks to escape. See to it that he does not pass you alive. The very
instant that he appears unattended by myself, fire upon him. I so
command you: see that my orders are executed. Does that suit you,
Monsieur Ravalette?”
“Perfectly--perfectly! nothing could be better,” said the latter.
“You will place fourteen men around the house to watch the windows, and
the other thirteen you will distribute on the stairs and landing,” said
the commissary.
“It shall be done,” said the sergeant, as he marched his men from the
chamber--but not till I had placed a double-barrelled Deringer and a
Colt’s revolver, both freshly capped and loaded, in his hands--for I
hated Ravalette; man or demon, I hated him religiously--that being the
strongest kind of dislike--and I had an intense desire to ascertain
whether he was bullet-proof or not.
During all this time, the father, daughter, lover, myself, and the
commissary’s two comrades had said nothing, but at a sign from Ravalette
we took our seats in such a position that we commanded the hall-door,
that between the two rooms, the recess, the cupboard, and the windows on
either side. The commissary placed the convex side of the screen toward
us, in the middle of the room, and then taking a seat by my side, said,
that so far as he was concerned, all was ready, and from the pallor of
his lips, the tone in which he spoke, and from the frequency with which
he crossed himself and muttered an orison, compounded of bad French and
worse Latin, it was clear that he wished his hands well washed of the
whole affair.
“I, too, am ready,” observed the wizard, “and I, who have nothing to
conceal, declare that I am he whom yonder man--Im Hokeis, and his
Guebre-tribe, have for centuries believed to be the God of Fire and of
Flame. The mystery of my being cannot yet be solved. I am not alone! The
mastery, over Matter and over Magic, is an inheritance of the ages. We
who were once as others are, became doomed ones by reason of the curse
of a dying man, and like Isaac Ahasuerus, the Hebrew of Jerusalem, who
cursed and spat upon the Man of Sorrows when bearing his gibbet up the
steep lane of the Dolorous Way, and whom the Meek one cursed, and bade
tarry on earth till he came--even so is he not alone. Powerful in all
else, not one of us can read his own future; but for that must depend on
gifted ones like yonder Beverly. Such are seldom born; but when they
are, there is only one opportunity to make them subservient to our
aid--they must be unwedded in soul, else they cannot enter the sleep of
Sialam, and in no other way can the scroll of Fate be read for us. Hence
the obstacles thrown in his path and in that of yonder girl.... It is
possible to shift our fate upon the neutral, whoever he may be; but in
this case a strong motive existed to saddle the centuries upon yonder
man, who has, in various forms, been my contemporary since ages previous
to the laying of the foundations of Babylon and Nineveh.
“There is one more in being--by him I have been foiled--the
Stranger--and still another--the mother of this Beverly’s body. I hoped
to win him by Magic; I have failed. He has seen me thus, as I am,”--and
so saying, Ravalette slowly moved around the screen, continuing to speak
all the while, until he reappeared on the other corner--and saying, “and
thus.” We were astonished beyond measure at the change that had, in less
than twelve seconds, taken place.
Ravalette no longer stood before us, but instead, we saw a thin, lean,
little, wrinkled old man, the perfect opposite in everything of the
person we had just conversed with. “Miakus! as I live--the man of
Portland and of Boston--the same!” exclaimed Beverly, as the figure
passed once more from view behind the screen, and almost instantly
reappeared in a totally dissimilar guise. “And thus!” said the wizard.
“My heaven!” said Beverly, “it is Ettelavar, my mysterious guide and
teacher in the kingdom of Trance and Dream!”
Again this strange being passed around the screen, saying, “and thus,”
as he reappeared successively as the Italian Count and Vatterale. The
wizard said, when in the last form, “Mai is but a transposition of I am;
‘Miakus’ is ‘Myself,’ Vatterale is an anagram of Ravalette, and a
school-boy would have told you that Ettelavar is but Ravalette
reversed--the name meaning ‘The Mysterious.’ To you, Beverly, I have
been all these. Behold me now as I really am,” and he passed around the
screen, and reappeared again as a little, withered old man, clothed in
flaming red from head to heel.
“The Vampire, Dhoula Bel!” shrieked both Beverly and Im Hokeis in the
same breath.
* * * * *
What passed during the next half hour, it would not be proper for me
here to relate. Suffice it, that at the end of that time Beverly had
fallen asleep, apparently of his own free will. What followed will be
seen in the next, and concluding chapter of this work.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SLEEP OF SIALAM.
Deep was the silence, hushed were our breaths. Quick beat our hearts,
tearful were our eyes, for a greater than even Death was in that room on
the Boulevart de Luxembourg!
Seated in a large office-chair, his limbs stiff and cold with the damps
of dissolution; his face paler than the Genius of Consumption; his heart
and pulses totally moveless; his eyes wide open, and so upturned that
not a speck of aught but the uncolored portions thereof were visible,
was my friend. In previous years I had often seen him and hundreds of
others in both the mesmeric and odyllic trance--the latter being the
very common semi-comatic state into which sensitive persons often pass
by the merest effort of volition, and in which they give off such
high-sounding platitudes and call them philosophy transmitted direct
from spirit-land to erring mortals, when the fact is, that the whole
phenomena--when not simulated, which is not the case in over nine
hundred and ninety cases in each thousand of its display--is but the
concurrent action of a diseased body and an abnormal, unhealthy mind,
and in many cases morals also, for it makes no matter how good or
well-intentioned the subjects may be in the start, they are sure to
yield before the accursed blast, and only the fires of hell itself can
stop their mad career and turn them back to normal paths.
Not such a trance was that we now were witnessing. In the course of five
minutes there came a change in the sleeper’s face, which became lighted
up as if at that moment his soul beheld the ineffable glories of the
great Beyond.
He spoke: “Now!”
As this one word escaped his lips, the door of the room was silently
opened, and two men entered and were about taking seats, when the
Commissary of Police suddenly rose, made a low obeisance, saluted one of
them in military style, and exclaimed, “The Emp----”
“Silence!” said the person addressed; “all are strangers here!” And then
turning to Dhoula Bel, with whom he appeared quite familiar, this person
said to him, “At last?”
“At last!” echoed the latter; whereupon the two new comers helped
themselves to seats.
The whole affair had gone thus far so directly opposite to all my
calculations; events had taken such sudden and totally unexpected turns,
that I ceased to marvel at this new game of cross-purposes, but
determined to watch the results carefully, whatever they might be. Of
course I expected that the new comer would now take the lead of affairs.
But no; for Dhoula Bel, as I shall henceforth call him, addressed the
shorter of the two intruders as follows:
“Why do you, too, seek to thwart me? Many years ago I found you a
student of magic in your lonely prison, whither you had been consigned
because you had failed on two occasions. I rescued you, gave you
liberty, influence, power, prestige, and seated you firmly on the
proudest throne on earth; I have made you famed and feared; I have
humbled Britain in your name; for you I have broken the power of
ages--the Papacy; for you I have severed Austria, and built a new empire
on the earth. For you I have fomented the most awful war the world has
ever seen, and have divided a nation of brothers into two parties, each
thirsting for the other’s blood; and while you have been the silent
automaton, I have prompted your speech and moved the wires that govern
the world, asking nothing whatever in return, and yet you are here to
thwart me who have ever been your friend. Why is this?”
“I admit--nothing. I am a man of Destiny!”
“Shall I reveal it?”
“I care not.”
“Well, I forbear; but let this sleeper tell it.”
“I am content. Interrogate him. This is the hour, and this the scene for
which I long have waited. Let the oracle speak.”
“Listen to me,” said the taller of the two intruders. “Ye have both been
proxies of a power beyond us all; and even as I, the Stranger, have
foiled each of ye, yet my action was decreed. The drama of ages may end
to-day. Not one of us can read his own future; there is but one on earth
who can read it, and there is but one hour in which it may be done. That
person is here; that hour has come. Not with the magnetic afflatus of
puling, babbling somnambules; not with the boastful confidence of
self-styled explorers of mythical Summer Lands, or imaginary spheres;
but with a vision, simple, pure and accurate, shall yonder sleeper sweep
the horizon of the future, and reveal it. Therefore let there be
quietude and peace, while the mystic scroll is being read.”
Then turning to the slumberer, he said: “What seest thou, O Soul? Look!
investigate! reveal! What seest thou concerning France and her ruler?”
“France will experience another Revolution. It will begin in Water and
end in Blood and Fire! but the end will be delayed. Crown, Sceptre,
Dynasty--all are swept away before the resistless tide of Political
Reformation, and the last noble and priest shares the fate of the last
crowned head--exile and death.”
“What of the other Nationalities?”
“Prussia, under a new _régime_, becomes indeed a Fatherland to her
people; Belgium, Holland, and other of the Germanic lands, become
consolidated with empires now existing; Spain’s night draws near--her
colonies, erected into Black Republics, leave her to sink in loneliness,
until at last she becomes, with Rome, an integral part of the great
Italian Empire; Austria becomes dismembered; Hungary and Poland coalesce
and form a new power on the earth; Turkey passes into Greek hands; Syria
into Russian; England loses Canada, India, Oregon and Ireland, which
latter becomes a Republic; the United States, rejoined, absorbs Canada,
Mexico and all British America--her Black races found an empire which
will extend from her southern borders to Brazil, under the rule of a
series of Presidents; China, Christianized by the Taepings, becomes a
first-class power in the East, blotting out Japan and a score of lesser
kingdoms; while India and Australia become respectively an Empire and a
Republic; and all this within sixty-three years from the seventh decade
of the century!”
“What of Religious changes? Speak! Let us know!”
“All Religious systems in the world, outside of the Christian, will
gravitate toward, and finally be wholly absorbed by it; and while this
is taking place, there will be a quiet revolution occurring in that
system itself; Catholicism, modified and divested of certain
objectionable features, will become the right wing and conservative
portion of the Religion of the entire world, while the radical portion
of that Church, and of all other churches, will secede, rear the
standard of Free Thought, proclaim the Religion of Reason, espouse the
Reformatory men and principles of the age, declare itself a Positive,
Eclectic, and Progressive Faith, abjuring the doctrines of Original Sin,
the Adamic, Mosaic, Hebraic Atonement theories, and everything
affirmative of Miracle, Final Judgment, and a Hell. This party will be
in a minority, and the left wing of the grand Religious system of the
world; it will constantly receive accessions of recruits from the other
and barbaric element of society; but so rapid will be the human march,
that the right flank of the grand army will constantly crowd the left
and occupy its ground, while the latter will as constantly move on
toward new fields, as new ideas are developed and seen.”
“Now, Prophet, what of thyself?”
“Speedy death, relief from sorrow, a lot with other men, and comparative
happiness--on the other side of time.”
“What of the Rosicrucian System?”
“I have already sketched it under the name of the left wing. But ere
long there will arise a great man--a German--a Prussian, who will
declare that system to the world, and who will be _the_ Man of the 19th
century; and yet his astonishing power and influence will not be felt
until he shall be dead and the twentieth century shall reach its third
decade. That man lives to-day--in obscurity--totally unknown; he is in
America, but will arise to his work in Europe, and will be to the
intellectual and philosophical world, what Budha was to India, Plato to
Greece, Thothmes III. to Egypt, Moses to Jewry, Mahomet to Arabia,
Luther to Europe, and Columbus to the New World. THIS GERMAN IS THE
COMING MAN! He will first be heard of in New York city, in connection
with a small, but powerful journal that will soon see the light, and
begin its work in that great Metropolis. Supposing the whole field of
possible human progress and achievement to be embraced within the circle
of twenty-six, then this man’s field embraces the figures 3, 8, 1, 18,
12, 5, 19; 20, 18, 9, 14, 9, 21, 19,--and his motto will be TRY! The
figures are easily solvable. This man will be simple, earnest and
unostentatious, but firm, steadfast and uncompromising. His resources
will be millions, and he will command all the gold he needs for the
great work to be accomplished. He will boldly announce the grand
Doctrines of the THIRD AND CULMINATING Temple of the Rosie Cross; and
his followers will be as the sands of the sea in number, and their
principles will, in time, be as resistless as its waves. He will begin
his work personally, and by agency _before_ this great Rebellion in
behalf of Human Slavery shall have been ended. Mark that!”
As the sleeping man gave utterance to these inspired prophesies, the
less tall of the two strangers appeared disturbed, and almost rising to
his feet with excitement, he said:
“Then this man’s career will resemble my own?”
“As fire resembles ice. This man’s career will be peaceful; his path
will not be stained by one single drop of blood. No maimed men will
curse, no widows weep, no orphans cry for vengeance, nor will the
ignorance of the people constitute the lever of his power, nor be the
instrument by means of which he will vault into a throne!”
“But I am strong!--Mexico!--Empire!--The Latin race!--The
Church!--Maximilian! What can break this chain, supposing I establish
the last link, as I intend to?”
“Fate! The United States will, in that case, soon find time to breathe
upon France and the New Empire! That breath will settle as a cloud, but,
when it rises, _two_ dynasties will have disappeared _forever_!”
“Damnation!” exclaimed the questioner, and he stamped his feet and
ground his teeth with rage almost demoniac.
“There will be _two_ damned nations, if that programme is carried out,”
said the sleeping man, in tones musical and calm, as if he was
discussing the merits of a play rather than prophesying the fate and
destinies of Empires.
For a moment there was silence. At length Ravalette spoke--
“And now my turn. What, O sleeper! what of me?”
The seer smiled blandly, stretched forth his hands toward both the tall
personage and the Enigma. They went forward, grasped the sleeper’s hands
in their own, and--
“The Enmity of Ages is ended!”
“It is ended!” repeated the tall one.
“It is finished! Thy work is done--and mine--and thine”--indicating
Ravalette--said the seer. “Henceforward, there is rest for the
weary--there is rest for thee! No longer doomed to walk the earth, we
three quit it. Our paths diverge from this moment. Above our heads is a
scroll, on which is written--
‘YE MAY BE HAPPY YET!’”
“Thank Heaven!” said Dhoula Bel.
“Thank Heaven!” repeated the Stranger.
“It is finished!” said Beverly, and, as he spoke, Dhoula Bel moved
behind the screen, and, the very instant that he did so, there came the
sharp crack of fire-arms in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied with
any amount of oaths uttered in not very choice French.
Immediately, running to the door along with the Commissary of Police
and one of his comrades, I demanded to know the cause of the
disturbance.
“By the Holy Evangelists! I fired straight into his head, and it didn’t
faze him an inch!” said the sergeant.
“And I struck him square in the middle of the head, and _that_ didn’t
harm him in the least!” said another.
“And I put two Derringer bullets and four Colt’s fair into his breast,
at ten inches, and blast me if all six didn’t fly back and hit me!”
exclaimed a third.
“And I’ll swear that he didn’t come through the open door, for it was
fast shut, with my hand on the knob, every second of the time!” said the
fourth.
“It was the devil!” said a fifth.
“Or his imp!” said the sixth.
“And I’ll swear he never passed by me on the lower stair!” observed the
seventh man.
“Come hither into the room and tell us what you are driving at,” said
the Commissary.
“I’m driving at nothing just now,” said the sergeant, as he came in “but
I have been trying to drive some bullets through the devil! Do you
remember telling me not to let a certain person go out, even if I had to
shoot him to prevent it?”
“Certainly I do. Go on.”
“Well, the first thing I knew, that gentleman stood outside the door,
and said, as he made faces and ran out his tongue at me, ‘I’m going out
in spite of you, monsieur.’ ‘_Are_ you, indeed?’ ‘Of course I am: just
see me do it,’ said he, and he marched straight for the stairs, and
four of us undertook to clinch him, and did so. Gentlemen, have you ever
picked up a hot potatoe? Well, I have, and did not let it drop quicker
than we four let go of that individual; only that instead of burning us,
it felt for all the world like one feels at the Polytechnic when he
takes hold of those infernal things with wires to them, and which
discharge a quart or two of lightning into you before you can say Jack
Robinson! We let go of the gentleman very quickly, and he passed two or
three steps downward, all the while laughing at us, which made me
furious, and I fired point-blank at him, and we all attempted to cut him
down, but you might just as well have tried to kill a shadow. Messieurs,
that man disappeared in the smoke of our pistols! He never _passed out
in visible_ form!”
During the sergeant’s relation I had determined to see if Dhoula Bel had
really left the room, and for that purpose I carelessly walked toward
the window and past the screen. _There was nobody_ whatever behind or
near it. I walked back, said nothing, but resumed the seat I had
formerly occupied.
“Are you sure of what you tell us; that you are wide awake, and not
dreaming?” said the Commissary.
“As certain as I am that he is not now in this room.”
“Which shows how easily people may be deceived,” said a voice from
behind the screen, and instantly thereafter Dhoula Bel himself walked
out into the middle of the floor--stone floor it was--and after pointing
his finger scornfully at the sergeant and his men, he deliberately
walked back behind the screen again.
My hair stood up with fright and horror; not so the seven brave
Frenchmen; for with one accord they rushed toward the screen,
exclaiming: “But we have you now, man or devil!” dashed it away with a
single blow, and--
_There was no one whatever behind it._
The sergeant fell as if he had been shot.
Determined to preserve myself from surprise, I steadily kept my seat and
watched the Stranger and his companion. The latter rose from his chair,
advanced toward Hokeis and his daughter, who had both sat silent and
spell-bound during the whole of this extraordinary scene of diablerie,
and spoke a few words in a low tone to them.
While this was going on, the tall Stranger passed into the other room,
and within a period of twelve seconds I rose and followed, but he too
had disappeared!
* * *
There was a marriage in Paris next day. A son of Adam had wedded with a
daughter of Ish.
* * *
Two weeks later we carried an invalid to the baths of Switzerland. We
remained there two months, then, finding that he grew worse, conveyed
him back to Paris.
* * *
Three months elapsed. A funeral cortége wound up the paths of Père le
Chaise. A coffin was lowered into a new-made grave. Upon its brink stood
an old grey-haired man upholding and consoling a beautiful but
sorrow-hearted woman--one who had but recently been a bride.
* * *
Four months passed: I was on the eve of quitting France. I went to the
cemetery, and for an hour sat by a tombstone, on which was sculptured
these words--
“BEVERLY, THE ROSICRUCIAN.
“_Je renais de Mes Cendres!_”
That was all!
* * *
Across the sea, I tread my native soil again. I have availed myself of
the knowledge imparted by my friend.
* * *
Last night, in returning from the Rosicrucian lodge to which I have the
honor to belong, I called upon a lady friend in the ----th Avenue. In
her arms she held a bright and glowing child--“a boy,” said she. “Is he
not beautiful? Is he not like his father?”
“Wonderfully like,” I replied. “What is its name?”
“Osiris Budh! Curious name, isn’t it?”
“Very!” I replied, as I took my leave--“very!”
CONSUMMATUM EST.
Transcriber’s Notes
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained
except in obvious cases of typographical error (see list below).
Page ii: added missing period after B
P. B. Randolph
Page 7: added missing “ at begin of poem
“In the most high and palmy days of Rome,
Page 10: changed : to ;
The good prevailed;
Page 12: changed analagous to analogous
but something analogous to that
Page 29: added period in heading
CHAPTER III.
Page 30: changed : to ;
first lines speedily wear away;
Page 36: changed : to ;
shameless harlots of the other;
Page 39: changed 2 occurrences of : to ;
but do me good; that his name was Ettelavar;
Page 59: changed unpronouncable to unpronounceable
with an unpronounceable name
Page 61: changed acompanying to accompanying
on the harp and piano, accompanying the performances vocally
Page 62: Added ’ at end of paragraph
if you but say the word!’
Page 90: changed by to my
my back nearly touching it.
Page 92: changed towards to toward
turning toward the man
Page 93: changed soundrel to scoundrel
of as great a scoundrel as ever went loose upon the world.
Page 108: added period at end of sentence
to tell the danger I and the house had been in.
Page 111: changed weired to weird
when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I
Page 114: changed distahce to distance
you perceive, of a dark brown color, but at a distance,
Page 115: changed ” to ’
Now that glass disk before you contains such a liquid, thus
compounded--’
Page 141: completed quote with !’
in an almost indistinguishable tone, the words, ‘It shall be!’
Page 147: added period at end of sentence
for the entire jewel was not larger than a golden dollar.
Page 160: added ’ at end of paragraph
just as I fixed it an hour or two after Ravalette paid me.’
Page 164: completed unclear end of line
left the street of Michel le Compte, and turned up that of the
Temple.
Page 165: removed ’
assist in piling up the horripilant.
Page 174: changed gardiner to gardener
I put the same question to the proprietor that I had to the gardener
Page 174: changed . to ,
Not yet content, I made inquiries
Page 181: changed ” to ’
Now, my dear, was all this hum-bug?’
Page 203: changed griping to gripping
fastens upon its victim, is merciless, gripping, stern and
unrelenting.
Page 212: added ’ at end of paragraph
quite as interesting as anything you have yet beheld. Look!’
Page 230: added ” at and of paragraph
“‘Beverly!’”
Page 249: changed . to ,
Across the sea, I tread my native soil again.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Wonderful Story of Ravalette" ***
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