upon earth who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of another?
Is it not true that not one drop of water, one atom of matter, ever really
touches another? Between each and each there is always a space, however
infinitesimally small. How, then, could the world go on, if every man
asked another to make his whole history and being as lucid as daylight
before he would buy and sell with him? All interchange and alliance rest
but on this,--an interest in common. You and I have established that
interest: all else, all you ask more, is superfluous. Could I answer
each doubt you would raise, still, whether the answer should please or
revolt you, your reason would come back to the same starting-point,
--namely, In one definite proposal have we two an interest in common?"

And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in mockery. The laugh and
the words that preceded it were not the laugh and the words of the young.
Could it be possible that Louis Grayle had indeed revived to false youth
in the person of Margrave, such might have been his laugh and such his
words. The whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergone change since I
last saw him; more rich in idea, more crafty even in candour, more
powerful, more concentred. As we see in our ordinary experience, that
some infirmity, threatening dissolution, brings forth more vividly the
reminiscences of early years, when impressions were vigorously stamped, so
I might have thought that as Margrave neared the tomb, the memories he had
retained from his former existence, in a being more amply endowed, more
formidably potent, struggled back to the brain; and the mind that had
lived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of the dying Margrave.

"For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your reason to assign
or deny to me," resumed my terrible guest, "I will say briefly but this:
they come from faculties stored within myself, and doubtless conduce to my
self-preservation,--faculties more or less, perhaps (so Van Helmont