just such a storm came on as had risen some time before at the death of
Kuntz, whose spectre was still tormenting the city. The gnomes of terror,
deep hidden in the caverns of Teufelsbuerst's nature, broke out jubilant.
With trembling hands he tried to cast the pall over the awful white
chrysalis,--failed, and fled to his chamber. And there lay the studio
naked to the eyes of the lightning, with its tortured forms throbbing out
of the dark, and quivering, as with life, in the almost continuous
palpitations of the light; while on the couch lay the motionless mass of
whiteness, gleaming blue in the lightning, almost more terrible in its
crude indications of the human form, than that which it enclosed. It lay
there as if dropped from some tree of chaos, haggard with the snows of
eternity--a huge misshapen nut, with a corpse for its kernel.

"But the lightning would soon have revealed a more terrible sight still,
had there been any eyes to behold it. At midnight, while a peal of thunder
was just dying away in the distance, the crust of death flew asunder,
rending in all directions; and, pale as his investiture, staring with
ghastly eyes, the form of Karl started up sitting on the couch. Had he not
been far beyond ordinary men in strength, he could not thus have rent his
sepulchre. Indeed, had Teufelsbuerst been able to finish his task by the
additional layer of gypsum which he contemplated, he must have died the
moment life revived; although, so long as the trance lasted, neither the
exclusion from the air, nor the practical solidification of the walls of
his chest, could do him any injury. He had lain unconscious throughout the
operations of Teufelsbuerst, but now the catalepsy had passed away,
possibly under the influence of the electric condition of the atmosphere.
Very likely the strength he now put forth was intensified by a convulsive
reaction of all the powers of life, as is not infrequently the case in
sudden awakenings from similar interruptions of vital activity. The coming
to himself and the bursting of his case were simultaneous. He sat staring