or this vapour was not dark, but resembled
a snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman's
heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes
strained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not
be sure that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim,
spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it
not rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into
those moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter
of antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully,
that the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre,
and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms
blending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it
ceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposed
to inhabit. Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floated
through the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this
atmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind
of horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
into the outer one. He heard the door close,--his blood rushed again
through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsions
then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the ground insensible.
When he recovered, he found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of
stone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the
dark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who
stood beside him with folded arms.

"Young man," said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, how
dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Another
moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse."

"Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was
death for me to breathe? Mejnour," continued Glyndon, and his wild
desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animated
and nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the first steps. I come to
you as of old the pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation."

Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart,--it beat loud,
regularly,