, as a weakness impossible to
the grandeur and might which belong to Intellectual Man; I felt as if
it were a royal delight to scorn Earth and its opinions, brave Hades
and its spectres. Rapidly this new-born arrogance enlarged itself
into desires vague but daring. My mind reverted to the wild phenomena
associated with its memories of Margrave. I said half-aloud, "if a
creature so beneath myself in constancy of will and completion of
thought can wrest from Nature favours so marvellous, what could not be
won from her by me, her patient persevering seeker? What if there be
spirits around and about, invisible to the common eye, but whom we can
submit to our control; and what if this rod be charged with some occult
fluid, that runs through all creation, and can be so disciplined as to
establish communication wherever life and thought can reach to beings
that live and think? So would the mystics of old explain what perplexes
me. Am I sure that the mystics of old duped them selves or their pupils?
This, then, this slight wand, light as a reed in my grasp, this, then,
was the instrument by which Margrave sent his irresistible will through
air and space, and by which I smote himself, in the midst of his
tiger-like wrath, into the helplessness of a sick man's swoon! Can the
instrument at this distance still control him; if now meditating evil,
disarm and disable his purpose?" Involuntarily, as I revolved these
ideas, I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred energy of desire
that its influence should reach Margrave and command him. And since I
knew not his whereabout, yet was vaguely aware that, according to any
conceivable theory by which the wand could be supposed to carry its
imagined virtues to definite goals in distant space, it should be
pointed in the direction of the object it was intended to affect, so I
slowly moved the wand as if describing a circle; and thus, in some point
of the circle--east, west, north, or south--the direction could not fail
to be true. Before I had performed half the circle, the wand of itself
stopped, resisting palpably the movement of my hand to impel it onward.
Had it, then, found the point to which my will was guiding it, obeying
my will by some magnetic sympathy never yet comprehended by any
recognized science? I know not; but I had not held it thus fixed for
many seconds, before a cold air, well remembered, passed by me, stirring
the roots of my hair; and, reflected against the opposite w