the powers that may tempt the good--where less wise than experience has
made thee and me--to the ends that are evil; and not even to thy friend
the most virtuous--if less proof against passion than thou and I have
become--wilt thou confide such contents of the casket as may work on the
fancy, to deafen the conscience and imperil the soul."

Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions for use, which he did
not detail. He then spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspired
him with a mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity and
terror. And Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to him, so
far as I can trust, in regard to them--as to all else in this marvellous
narrative--to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary matters, and
strained to the utmost extent of its power, by the strangeness of the
ideas presented to it, and the intensity of my personal interest in
whatever admitted a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast over my
reason, now threatened storm to my affections,--

"When the mortal deliberately allies himself to the spirits of evil, he
surrenders the citadel of his being to the guard of its enemies; and those
who look from without can only dimly guess what passes within the
precincts abandoned to Powers whose very nature we shrink to contemplate,
lest our mere gaze should invite them. This man, whom thou pitiest, is
not yet everlastingly consigned to the fiends, because his soul still
struggles against them. His life has been one long war between his
intellect, which is mighty, and his spirit, which is feeble. The
intellect, armed and winged by the passions, has besieged and oppressed
the soul; but the soul has never ceased to repine and to repent. And at
moments it has gained its inherent ascendancy, persuaded revenge to drop
the prey it had seized, turned the mind astray from hatred and wrath into
unwonted paths of charity and love. In the long desert of guilt, there