"Sir Philip," I said, with impatient and angry interruption, "if you think
that a jargon of this kind be worthy a man of your acquirements and
station, it is at least a waste of time to address it to me. I am led to
conclude that you desire to make use of me for some purpose which I have a
right to suppose honest and blameless, because all you know of me is, that
I rendered to your relation services which can not lower my character in
your eyes. If your object be, as you have intimated, to aid you in
exposing and disabling man whose antecedents have been those of guilt, and
who threatens with danger the society which receives him, you must give me
proofs that are not reducible to magic; and you must prepossess me against
the person you accuse, not by powders and fumes that disorder the brain,
but by substantial statements, such as justify one man in condemning
another. And, since you have thought fit to convince me that there are
chemical means at your disposal, by which the imagination can be so
affected as to accept, temporarily, illusions for realities, so I again
demand, and now still more decidedly than before, that while you address
yourself to my reason, whether to explain your object or to vindicate your
charges against a man whom I have admitted to my acquaintance, you will
divest yourself of all means and agencies to warp my judgment so illicit
and fraudulent as those which you own yourself to possess. Let the
casket, with all its contents, be transferred to my hands, and pledge me
your word that, in giving that casket, you reserve to yourself no other
means by which chemistry can be abused to those influences over physical
organization, which ignorance or imposture may ascribe to--magic."

"I accept no conditions for my confidence, though I think the better ofyou
for attempting to make them. If I live, you will seek me yourself, and
implore my aid. Meanwhile, listen to me, and--"