massive silver clasps. There were no
letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But
it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid
had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled
in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon
the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror;
while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said: "Forbear!"

Such was Doctor Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale
a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the
room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and workmanship.
The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of
two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase; so that
a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five
old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the
table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Doctor Heidegger, "may I reckon on
your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Doctor Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose
eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories.
Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be
traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the
present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to
bear the stigma of a fiction-monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed
experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder
of a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
microscope, or some similiar nonsense, with which he was constantly in
the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply,
Doctor Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the
same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report
affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened
the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what
was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had
assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to
crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.

"This rose," said Doctor Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered
and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was
given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to
wear it in my bosom at ou