Creator has hitherto withheld the spiritual perception, can
therefore contend that there are no spirits. O, there are! And, at
this moment, when the subject of which I write has grown strong
within me and surrounded itself with those solemn and awful
associations which might have seemed most alien to it, I could fancy
that Monsieur du Miroir himself is a wanderer from the spiritual
world, with nothing human except his delusive garment of visibility.
Methinks I should tremble now were his wizard power of gliding
through all impediments in search of me to place him suddenly before
my eyes.

Ha! What is yonder? Shape of mystery, did the tremor of my
heartstrings vibrate to thine own, and call thee from thy home among
the dancers of the northern lights, and shadows flung from departed
sunshine, and giant spectres that appear on clouds at daybreak and
affright the climber of the Alps? In truth it startled me, as I
threw a wary glance eastward across the chamber, to discern an
unbidden guest with his eyes bent on mine. The identical MONSIEUR DU
MIROIR! Still there he sits and returns my gaze with as much of awe
and curiosity as if he, too, had spent a solitary evening in
fantastic musings and made me his theme. So inimitably does he
counterfeit that I could almost doubt which of us is the visionary
form, or whether each be not the other's mystery, and both twin
brethren of one fate, in mutually reflected spheres. O friend,
canst thou not hear and answer me? Break down the barrier between
us! Grasp my hand! Speak! Listen! A few words, perhaps, might
satisfy the feverish yearning of my soul for some master-thought
that should guide me through this labyrinth of life, teaching
wherefore I was born, and how to do my task on earth, and what is
death. Alas! Even that unreal image should forget to ape me and