or study. I found that I had
overtaxed my strength, and saw the necessity of taking more food.

One morning when I felt so debilitated that I really thought my last
hour was come, I ordered my servant to make me some broth. He had
scarcely left my laboratory to obey my orders when a peculiar sensation
came over me. I am as certain as I am of my own existence at the present
moment that I was then in a waking state, though what I am about to
relate to you now may appear to some like a dream. I felt--if I may so
describe my feelings--that I did not belong to myself, or, as if my
spirit were entirely free and independent of my body. It was a feeling
as of a bounding elasticity, as if neither the walls of my cell nor any
other material objects were impediments to me, and that I was capable at
will of soaring into realms of space, and of conversing with
intelligences of an immeasurably higher order than those of our mundane
sphere, and of perfectly understanding discourses that in the body I was
perfectly sure would be beyond my comprehension.

I remember that on this very morning I was seated in a high-backed
arm-chair of carved oak, in a reflective mood. My crucibles and retorts
strewed the laboratory in the greatest disorder. I was too weak to study
or even to rise from my chair, when suddenly upon raising my eyes
towards the opposite wall of my laboratory, the scene seemed changed,
and instead of the bare wall before me I saw the mouth of a large cave,
through the innumerable arches of which I could see to a great distance,
for the interior seemed lighted up as with fire.

Now, I know that I was perfectly unable to rise from my chair, yet it
appeared to me that I rose, and with firm step entered the cave.

It was dark and very chilly. I gazed around me for a moment and
shuddered when I discovered at my side, my eyes being now accustomed to
the light, the form of an old man, bald-headed, and with snowy locks and
beard. His brow was high and his eye clear and beaming with wisdom and
benevolence. His form was upright and his step firm, and he wore a tunic
with ample folds and of a sad colour.

At first I started and looked at him wonderingly, as if to ask him who
he was. He answered to my thoughts affably. "I am your guide. You have
courted our intimacy, and sought to become our equal. Come with me, and
I will initiate you into our mysteries and show you the lot for which
you have so long been striving."

There was som