the matter short, I persuaded him to begin with me a series
of secret sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to him, to
infuse into him, as it were, some of my undoubted power--the power which
he daily saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my
intercourse with them.

"What I really wished to do, what I meant to do, if possible, was to use
Chichester as a medium, and to try through him to communicate with the
spirit world. I had taken it into my head--no doubt you will say quite
unreasonably--that he must be entirely subject to my will in a sitting,
and that if I willed him to be entranced, it was certain that he would
become so. But my own entirely selfish desires I concealed under the
cloak of an unselfish wish to give power to him. I even pretended, as you
see, to have a highly moral purpose, though it is true I suggested trying
to effect it in an unconventional and very unecclesiastical manner.

"Chichester, though, as I have said, at first startled, of course
eventually fell in with my view. We sat together in his room at Hornton
Street.

"Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost
contradictory. I have spoken of my _maladie de grandeur_ as if it were
a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire
to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason."

"I noticed that," observed Malling, "and purposed later to point it out
to you."

"How can I explain exactly? It is so difficult to unravel the web of
motives in a mind. It was my _maladie de grandeur_, I think, that made
me long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere tool for the opening of
that door which shuts off from us the region the dead have entered. My
mind at that time was filled with a mingled conceit, amounting at moments
almost to an intoxication, and a desire for knowledge. I reveled in my
power when preaching, but was haunted by genuine doubts as to truth. My
egoism longed to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly always
lusted to push my influence to its limit). But my desire to know made me
conceive the pushing of it in a direction, in this instance, which would
perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than that merely of subjugating
another. The two birds and the one stone! I thought of them. I loved the
idea of making a tool. I loved also the idea of using the tool when made.
And I pretended I had only Chichester's moral interest at heart. I hav