t vision vouchsafed to the mind, thou mayst lawfully use. But
the treasures contained in this casket are like all which a mortal can
win from the mines he explores,--good or ill in their uses as they pass
to the hands of the good or the evil. Thou wilt never confide them but
to those who will not abuse! and even then, thou art an adept too versed
in the mysteries of Nature not to discriminate between the powers that
may serve the good to good ends, and the powers that may tempt the
good--where less wise than experience has made thee and me--to the ends
that are evil; and not even to thy friend the most virtuous--if less
proof against passion than thou and I have become--wilt thou confide
such contents of the casket as may work on the fancy, to deafen the
conscience and imperil the soul."

Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions for use, which he did
not detail. He then spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspired
him with a mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity and
terror. And Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to
him, so far as I can trust, in regard to them--as to all else in this
marvellous narrative--to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary
matters, and strained to the utmost extent of its power, by the
strangeness of the ideas presented to it, and the intensity of my
personal interest in whatever admitted a ray into that cloud which,
gathering fast over my reason, now threatened storm to my affections,--

"When the mortal deliberately allies himself to the spirits of evil,
he surrenders the citadel of his being to the guard of its enemies; and
those who look from without can only dimly guess what passes within
the precincts abandoned to Powers whose very nature we shrink to
contemplate, lest our mere gaze should invite them. This man, whom thou
pitiest, is not yet everlastingly consigned to the fiends, because
his soul still struggles against them. His life has been one long war
between his intellect, which is mighty, and his spirit, which is feeble.
The intellect, armed and winged by the passions, has besieged and
oppressed the soul; but the soul has never ceased to repine and to
repent. And at moments it has gained its inherent ascendancy, persuaded
revenge to drop the prey it had seized, turned the mind astray from
hatred and wrath into unwonted paths of charity and love. In the long
desert of guilt, there have been green spots and fountains of good.