At length all the dreary compassion previously inspired vanished in one
unqualified abhorrence.

The subjects discussed changed from those which, relating to the common
world of men, were within the scope of my reason. Haroun led his wild
guest to boast of his own proficiency in magic, and, despite my
incredulity, I could not overcome the shudder with which fictions, however
extravagant, that deal with that dark Unknown abandoned to the chimeras of
poets, will, at night and in solitude, send through the veins of men the
least accessible to imaginary terrors.

Grayle spoke of the power he had exercised through the agency of evil
spirits,--a power to fascinate and to destroy. He spoke of the aid
revealed to him, now too late, which such direful allies could afford, not
only to a private revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had he acquired the
knowledge he declared himself to possess before the feebleness of the
decaying body made it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that
world which had expelled his youth from its pale! He spoke of means by
which his influence could work undetected on the minds of others, control
agencies that could never betray, and baffle the justice that could never
discover. He spoke vaguely of a power by which a spectral reflection of
the material body could be cast, like a shadow, to a distance; glide
through the walls of a prison, elude the sentinels of a camp,--a power
that he asserted to be when enforced by concentrated will, and acting on
the mind, where in each individual temptation found mind the
weakest--almost infallible in its effect to seduce or to appall. And he
closed these and similar boasts of demoniacal arts, which I remember too
obscurely to repeat, with a tumultuous imprecation on their nothingness to
avail against the gripe of death. All this lore he would communicate to