ant, the bee, and the beaver,--that which
was gone from the being before me.

I shrank appalled into myself, covered my face with my hands, and
groaned aloud: "Have I ever then doubted that soul is distinct from
mind?"

A hand here again touched my forehead, the light in the lamp was
extinguished, I became insensible; and when I recovered I found myself
back in the room in which I had first conversed with Sir Philip Derval,
and seated, as before, on the sofa, by his side.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

My recollections of all which I have just attempted to describe were
distinct and vivid; except with respect to time, it seemed to me as
if many hours must have elapsed since I had entered the museum with
Margrave; but the clock on the mantelpiece met my eyes as I turned them
wistfully round the room; and I was indeed amazed to perceive that five
minutes had sufficed for all which it has taken me so long to narrate,
and which in their transit had hurried me through ideas and emotions so
remote from anterior experience.

To my astonishment now succeeded shame and indignation,--shame that
I, who had scoffed at the possibility of the comparatively credible
influences of mesmeric action, should have been so helpless a puppet
under the hand of the slight fellow-man beside me, and so morbidly
impressed by phantasmagorieal illusions; indignation that, by some fumes
which had special potency over the brain, I had thus been, as it were,
conjured out of my senses; and looking full into the calm face at my
side, I said, with a smile to which I sought to convey disdain,--

"I congratulate you, Sir Philip Derval, on having learned in your
travels in the East so expert a familiarity with the tricks of its
jugglers."

"The East has a proverb," answered Sir Philip, quietly, "that the
juggler may learn much from the dervish, but the dervish can learn
nothing from the juggler. You will pardon me, however, for the effect
produced on you for a few minutes, whatever the cause of it may be,
since it may serve to guard your whole life from calamities, to which
it might otherwise have been exposed. And however you may consider that
which you have just experienced to be a mere optical illusion, or the
figment of a brain super-excited by the fumes of a vapour, look within
yourself, and tell me if you do not feel an inward and unanswerable
conviction that there is more reason to shun and to fear the creature
you left asleep under the dead jaws o