ter a
little silence, 'No, I am wrong. I can see the listeners; he is a doctor
lecturing among his pupils.' I said, 'Do you see anything near the door?'
and she said, 'Yes, I see a subject for dissection.' Then we saw him go
out again into the narrow streets, I following the story of the seeress,
sometimes merely following her words, but sometimes seeing for myself. My
acquaintance saw nothing; I think he was forbidden to see, it being his
own life, and I think could not in any case. His imagination had no will
of its own. Presently the man in black went into a house with two gables
facing the road, and up some stairs into a room where a hump-backed woman
gave him a key; and then along a corridor, and down some stairs into a
large cellar full of retorts and strange vessels of all kinds. Here he
seemed to stay a long while, and one saw him eating bread that he took
down from a shelf. The evoker of spirits and the seeress began to
speculate about the man's character and habits, and decided, from a
visionary impression, that his mind was absorbed in naturalism, but that
his imagination had been excited by stories of the marvels wrought by
magic in past times, and that he was trying to copy them by naturalistic
means. Presently one of them saw him go to a vessel that stood over a slow
fire, and take out of the vessel a thing wrapped up in numberless cloths,
which he partly unwrapped, showing at length what looked like the image of
a man made by somebody who could not model. The evoker of spirits said
that the man in black was trying to make flesh by chemical means, and
though he had not succeeded, his brooding had drawn so many evil spirits
about him, that the image was partly alive. He could see it moving a
little where it lay upon a table. At that moment I heard something like
little squeals, but kept silent, as when I saw the dead body. In a moment
more the seeress said, 'I hear little squeals.' Then the evoker of spirits
heard them, but said, 'They are not squeals; he is pouring a red liquid
out of a retort through a slit in the cloth; the slit is over the mouth of
the image and the liquid is gurgling in rather a curious way.' Weeks
seemed to pass by hurriedly, and somebody saw the man still busy in his
cellar. Then more weeks seemed to pass, and now we saw him lying sick in a
room up-stairs, and a man in a conical cap standing beside him. We could
see the image too. It was in the cellar, but now it could move feebly
abou