as long as I pleased without disturbance; but I found no such immunity.
When Bruno died, and his successor had followed him into the grave, it was
proposed that I should be the next prior; but this would not have suited
me at all. I had employed all my time in engrossing books, but the duties
of a prior were not for me, so I escaped, and went out into the world
again."

As I sat and listened to Mr. Crowder, his story seemed equally wonderful
to me, whether it were a plain statement of facts or the relation of an
insane dream. It was not a wild tale, uttered in the enthusiastic
excitement of a disordered mind; but it was a series of reminiscences,
told quietly and calmly, here a little, there a little, without
chronological order, each one touched upon as it happened to suggest
itself. From wondering I found myself every now and then believing: but
whenever I realized the folly in which I was indulging myself, I shook
off my credulity and endeavored to listen with interest, but without
judgment, for in this way only could I most thoroughly enjoy the
strange narrative; but my lapses into unconscious belief were frequent.

"You have spoken of marriage," said I. "Have you had many wives?"

My host leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. "That is a
subject," he said, "of which I think as little as I can, and yet I must
speak to you of it. It is right that I should do so. I have been married
so often that I can scarcely count the wives I have had. Beautiful women,
good women, some of them women to whom I would have given immortality had
I been able; but they died, and died, and died. And here is one of the
great drawbacks of living forever.

"Yet it was not always the death of my wives which saddened me the most;