tic
grace of these forms in their undulating movements! They appeared
engaged in some sport or amusement; now forming into opposite squadrons;
now scattering; now each group threading the other, soaring, descending,
interweaving, severing; all in measured time to the music below, as if
in the dance of the fabled Peri.

I turned my gaze on my host in a feverish wonder. I ventured to place my
hand on the large wings that lay folded on his breast, and in doing so a
slight shock as of electricity passed through me. I recoiled in fear;
my host smiled, and as if courteously to gratify my curiosity, slowly
expanded his pinions. I observed that his garment beneath them became
dilated as a bladder that fills with air. The arms seemed to slide
into the wings, and in another moment he had launched himself into the
luminous atmosphere, and hovered there, still, and with outspread wings,
as an eagle that basks in the sun. Then, rapidly as an eagle swoops, he
rushed downwards into the midst of one of the groups, skimming through
the midst, and as suddenly again soaring aloft. Thereon, three forms,
in one of which I thought to recognise my host's daughter, detached
themselves from the rest, and followed him as a bird sportively follows
a bird. My eyes, dazzled with the lights and bewildered by the throngs,
ceased to distinguish the gyrations and evolutions of these winged
playmates, till presently my host re-emerged from the crowd and alighted
at my side.

The strangeness of all I had seen began now to operate fast on my
senses; my mind itself began to wander. Though not inclined to be
superstitious, nor hitherto believing that man could be brought into
bodily communication with demons, I felt the terror and the wild
excitement with which, in the Gothic ages, a traveller might have
persuaded himself that he witnessed a 'sabbat' of fiends and witches.
I have a vague recollection of having attempted with vehement
gesticulation, and forms of exorcism, and loud incoherent words, to
repel my courteous and indulgent host; of his mild endeavors to calm and
soothe me; of his intelligent conjecture that my fright and bewilderment
were occasioned by the difference of form and movement between us which
the wings that had excited my marvelling curiosity had, in exercise,
made still more strongly perceptible; of the gentle smile with which he
had sought to dispel my alarm by dropping the wings to the ground and
endeavouring to show me that they