shudderingly implores to be saved from new guilt, and would rather abide
by the judgment of Allah on the sins that have darkened it than pass
forever irredeemably away to the demons,--if this be so, what if the
soul's petition be heard; what if it rise from the ruins around it; what
if the ruins be left to the witchcraft that seeks to rebuild them? There,
if demons might enter, that which they sought as their prize has escaped
them; that which they find would mock them by its own incompleteness even
in evil. In vain might animal life the most perfect be given to the
machine of the flesh; in vain might the mind, freed from the check of the
soul, be left to roam at will through a brain stored with memories of
knowledge and skilled in the command of its faculties; in vain, in
addition to all that body and brain bestow on the normal condition of man,
might unhallowed reminiscences gather all the arts and the charms of the
sorcery by which the fiends tempted the soul, before it fled, through the
passions of flesh and the cravings of mind: the Thing, thus devoid of a
soul, would be an instrument of evil, doubtless,--but an instrument that
of itself could not design, invent, and complete. The demons themselves
could have no permanent hold on the perishable materials. They might
enter it for some gloomy end which Allah permits in his inscrutable
wisdom; but they could leave it no trace when they pass from it, because
there is no conscience where soul is wanting. The human animal without
soul, but otherwise made felicitously perfect in its mere vital
organization, might ravage and destroy, as the tiger and the serpent may
destroy and ravage, and, the moment after, would sport in the sunlight
harmless and rejoicing, because, like the serpent and the tiger, it is
incapable of remorse."

"Why startle my wonder," said Derval, "with so fantastic an image?"

"Because, possibly, the image may come into palpable form! I know, while