of myself alone, as I could years ago, subject those races to my
command,--I must, in that, act through or with the mind of another. It is
true that I sought to impress upon your waking thoughts the images of the
circle, the powers of the wand, which, in your trance or sleep-walking,
made you the involuntary agent of my will. I knew by a dream--for by
dreams, more or less vivid, are the results of my waking will sometimes
divulged to myself--that the spell had been broken, the discovery I sought
not effected. All my hopes were then transferred from yourself, the dull
votary of science, to the girl whom I charmed to my thraldom through her
love for you and through her dreams of a realm which the science of
schools never enters. In her, imagination was all pure and all potent;
and tell me, O practical reasoner, if reason has ever advanced one step
into knowledge except through that imaginative faculty which is strongest
in the wisdom of ignorance, and weakest in the ignorance of the wise.
Ponder this, and those marvels that perplex you will cease to be
marvellous. I pass on to the riddle that puzzles you most. By Philip
Derval's account I am, in truth, Louis Grayle restored to youth by the
elixir, and while yet infirm, decrepit, murdered Haroun,--a man of a frame
as athletic as yours! By accepting this notion you seem to yourself alone
to unravel the mysteries you ascribe to my life and my powers. O wise
philosopher! O profound logician! you accept that notion, yet hold my
belief in the Dervish's tale a chimera! I am Grayle made young by the
elixir, and yet the elixir itself is a fable!"

He paused and laughed, but the laugh was no longer even an echo of its
former merriment or playfulness,--a sinister and terrible laugh, mocking,
threatening, malignant.

Again he swept his hand over his brow, and resumed,--