So saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching out his limbs
wearily. All round this spoilt darling of Material Nature were the aids
and appliances of Intellectual Science,--books and telescopes and
crucibles, with the light of day coming through a small circular aperture
in the boarded casement, as I had constructed the opening for my
experimental observation of the prismal rays.

While I write, his image is as visible before my remembrance as if before
the actual eye,--beautiful even in its decay, awful even in its weakness,
mysterious as is Nature herself amidst all the mechanism by which our
fancied knowledge attempts to measure her laws and analyze her light.

But at that moment no such subtle reflections delayed my inquisitive eager
mind from its immediate purpose,--who and what was this creature boasting
of a secret through which I might rescue from death the life of her who
was my all upon the earth?

I gathered rapidly and succinctly together all that I knew and all that I
guessed of Margrave's existence and arts. I commenced from my vision in
that mimic Golgotha of creatures inferior to man, close by the scene of
man's most trivial and meaningless pastime. I went on,--Derval's murder;
the missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by the maniac
assassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous haunting shadow; the
positive charge in the murdered man's memoir connecting Margrave with
Louis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the
moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful influence on Lilian; the
struggle between me and himself in the house by the seashore,--the strange
All that is told in this Strange Story.