'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the
wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the
mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I
repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the "Morris," whose name
appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _littérateur_ of that
name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.

'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too
harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their
murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated
with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now