the volume,
and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your book,--the
thesis for your theme."

"Davus sum, non Oedipus," said I, shaking my head, discontentedly.
"All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,--I don't
understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
fraternities, are mere child's play to the jargon of the Platonists."

"Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand
the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler
fraternities you speak of with so much levity."

"Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are
so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?"

"But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
will you prepare it for the public?"

"With the greatest pleasure," said I,--alas, too rashly!

"I shall hold you to your promise," returned the old gentleman, "and
when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say
of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with
the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you
beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious."

"Is your work a romance?"

"It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot."

At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.

With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the
packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole
written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a
specimen:

(Several strange characters.)

and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature
of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the
strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through
my disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole
thing looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers
into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with
them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume
with great p