ad
discovered one of the secrets of true magic; this was the key to the
symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth,
change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant
shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the
enemy, but by transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by
going up higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier
crag. The stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the
wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and
converse with his fellow-creatures, to listen to their poor pretences and
inanities, was no more inconvenienced than when he had to climb an
awkward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant
manifestations of humanity; after all they no longer concerned him. Men
intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current of their thoughts
to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web, so why
should he be perturbed by the misery of a puppy in the hands of village
boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tortures; lying helpless and bound
in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the claws of
the horrible monster fastened on it; but its dying agonies had never
vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys should
offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog more than
he pitied the fly. The talk of the men and women might be wearisome and
inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an alchemist at the
moment of success, a general in the hour of victory, or a financier with
a gigantic scheme of swindling well on the market being annoyed by the
buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very terrible brute with a
hideous mouth and hairy tiger-like claws when seen through the
microscope; but Lucian had taken away the microscope from his eyes. He
could now walk the streets of Caermaen confident and secure, without any
dread of interruption, for at a moment's notice the transformation could
be effected. Once Dr. Burrows caught him and made him promise to attend
a bazaar that was to be held in aid of the Hungarian Protestants; Lucian
assented the more willingly as he wished to pay a visit to certain
curious mounds on a hill a little way out of the town, and he calculated
on slinking off from the bazaar early in the afternoon. Lord Beamys was
visiting Sir Vivian Ponsonby, a local magnate, and h