_Haunted Man_, in which the ghost is memory; Hawthorne's _Scarlet
Letter_, in which the ghost is cruel conscience; and Balzac's _Quest of
the Absolute_, in which the old Flemish house of Balthasar Claes, in the
Rue de Paris at Douai, is haunted by a dæmon more potent than that of
Canidia. One might add some of Balzac's shorter stories, among them
"The Elixir"; and some of Hawthorne's _Twice-Told Tales_, including
"Edward Randolph's Portrait." On the French side we might note too that
terrible graveyard tale of Guy de Maupassant, _La Morte_, in which the
lover who has lost his beloved keeps vigil at her grave by night in his
despair, and sees--dreadful resurrection--"que toutes les tombes étaient
ouvertes, et tous les cadavres en étaient sortis." And why? That they
might efface the lying legends inscribed on their tombs, and replace
them with the actual truth. Villiers de l'Isle Adam has in his _Contes
Cruels_ given us the strange story of Véra, which may be read as a
companion study to _La Morte_, with another recall from the dead to end
a lover's obsession. Nature and supernature cross in de l'Isle Adam's
mystical drama _Axël_ a play which will never hold the stage, masterly
attempt as it is to dramatise the inexplainable mystery.

Among later tales ought to be reckoned Edith Wharton's _Tales of Men and
Ghosts_, and Henry James's _The Two Magics_, whose "Turn of the Screw"
gives us new instances of the evil genii that haunt mortals, in this
case two innocent children. One remembers sundry folk-tales with the
same motive--of children bewitched or forespoken--inspiring them. And an
old charm in Orkney which used to run:

"Father, Son, Holy Ghost!
Bitten sall they be,
Bairn, wha have bitten thee!
Care to their black vein,