uous. Could I answer each doubt you would raise, still,
whether the answer should please or revolt you, your reason would come
back to the same starting-point,--namely, In one definite proposal have
we two an interest in common?"

And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in mockery. The laugh
and the words that preceded it were not the laugh and the words of the
young. Could it be possible that Louis Grayle had indeed revived to
false youth in the person of Margrave, such might have been his laugh
and such his words. The whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergone
change since I last saw him; more rich in idea, more crafty even in
candour, more powerful, more concentred. As we see in our ordinary
experience, that some infirmity, threatening dissolution, brings forth
more vividly the reminiscences of early years, when impressions were
vigorously stamped, so I might have thought that as Margrave neared the
tomb, the memories he had retained from his former existence, in a being
more amply endowed, more formidably potent, struggled back to the brain;
and the mind that had lived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of the dying
Margrave.

"For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your reason to
assign or deny to me," resumed my terrible guest, "I will say briefly
but this: they come from faculties stored within myself, and doubtless
conduce to my self-preservation,--faculties more or less, perhaps (so
Van Helmont asserts), given to all men, though dormant in most; vivid
and active in me because in me self-preservation has been and yet is the
strong master-passion, or instinct; and because I have been taught how
to use and direct such faculties by disciplined teachers,--some by Louis
Grayle, the enchanter; some by my nurse, the singer of charmed songs.
But in much that I will to have done, I know no more than yourself how
the agency acts. Enough for me to will what I wish, and sink calmly into
slumber, sure that the will would work somehow its way. But when I have
willed to know what, when known, should shape my own courses, I could
see, without aid from your pitiful telescopes, all objects howsoever
far. What wonder in that? Have you no learned puzzle-brained
metaphysicians who tell you that space is but an idea, all this palpable
universe an idea in the mind, and no more? Why am I an enigma as dark as
the Sibyls, and your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?" Again the
sardonic laugh. "Enough: let what I h