And, as he spoke, his hand rested lightly on my head. Hitherto, amidst a
surprise not unmixed with awe, I had preserved a certain defiance, a
certain distrust. I had been, as it were, on my guard.

But as those words were spoken, as that hand rested on my head, as that
perfume arose from the lamp, all power of will deserted me. My first
sensation was that of passive subjugation; but soon I was aware of a
strange intoxicating effect from the odour of the lamp, round which there
now played a dazzling vapour. The room swam before me. Like a man
oppressed by a nightmare, I tried to move, to cry out, feeling that to do
so would suffice to burst the thrall that bound me: in vain.

A time that seemed to me inexorably long, but which, as I found
afterwards, could only have occupied a few seconds, elapsed in this
preliminary state, which, however powerless, was not without a vague
luxurious sense of delight. And then suddenly came pain,--pain, that in
rapid gradations passed into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve,
fibre of the body, seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto
unconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing itself to
light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed swollen to
bursting, the heart labouring to maintain its action by fierce spasms. I
feel in this description how language fails me. Enough that the anguish I
then endured surpassed all that I have ever experienced of physical pain.
This dreadful interval subsided as suddenly as it had commenced. I felt
as if a something undefinable by any name had rushed from me, and in that
rush that a struggle was over. I was sensible of the passive bliss which
attends the release from torture, and then there grew on me a wonderful
calm, and, in that calm, a consciousness of some lofty intelligence
immeasurably beyond that which human memory gathers from earthly
knowledge. I saw before me the still rigid form of Margrave, and my sight