but it would be of extraordinary
interest to test it for oneself.'

He looked round at the four persons who watched him intently. There was
a singular agitation in his manner, as though the thing of which he spoke
was very near his heart.

'The old alchemists believed in the possibility of spontaneous
generation. By the combination of psychical powers and of strange
essences, they claim to have created forms in which life became
manifest. Of these, the most marvellous were those strange beings,
male and female, which were called _homunculi_. The old philosophers
doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts
positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow
at London Bridge a little book in German. It was dirty and thumbed,
many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves
together. It was called _Die Sphinx_ and was edited by a certain Dr Emil
Besetzny. It contained the most extraordinary account I have ever read of
certain spirits generated by Johann-Ferdinand, Count von Kueffstein, in
the Tyrol, in 1775. The sources from which this account is taken consist
of masonic manuscripts, but more especially of a diary kept by a certain
James Kammerer, who acted in the capacity of butler and famulus to the
Count. The evidence is ten times stronger than any upon which men believe
the articles of their religion. If it related to less wonderful subjects,
you would not hesitate to believe implicitly every word you read. There
were ten _homunculi_--James Kammerer calls them prophesying spirits--kept
in strong bottles, such as are used to preserve fruit, and these were
filled with water. They were made in five weeks, by the Count von
Kueffstein and an Italian mystic and rosicrucian, the Abbe Geloni. The
bottles were closed with a magic seal. The spirits were about a span
long, and the Count was anxious that they should grow. They were
therefore buried under two cartloads of manure, and the pile daily
sprinkled with a certain liquor prepared with great trouble by the
adepts. The pile after such sprinklings began to ferment and steam, as
if heated by a subterranean fire. When the bottles were removed, it was
found that the spirits had grown to about a span and a half each; the
male _homunculi_ were come into possession of heavy beards, and the nails
of the fingers had grown. In two of the bottles there was nothing to be
seen save clear water, but when the Abbe knocked thri