My Library

“And so we parted. I loved Ravalette, but not his fraternity. This conversation with Ravalette, and, indeed, my entire intercourse with him, was invested with a peculiar halo of what I may justly call the weird. It was evident that all his words and allusions contained a deeper meaning than appeared upon the surface. His conversation had filled my soul with new and strange ideas and emotions; and I felt that he had left me at the inner door of a vast edifice, after skillfully conducting me through the vestibule. What worlds of mystery and meaning lay just beyond, was a theme of profound and uneasy conjecture. I felt and knew that he was no common or ordinary man; and well and strangely was this proved afterwards. “I had solaced myself with the hope that, by deferring my contemplated tour through Picardy and La Normandy, I should draw closer the bonds of common sympathy between us, and be made wiser through the abrasion of such an intellect as his. How suddenly and how rudely was this hope shattered! “When he dismissed me so abruptly, after baiting my soul with such a splendid lure, I could but feel both astonished and aggrieved. Thousands would have been too small a price to pay for even one day more of his society; but, alas! thousands could not purchase it. Still, I learned a lesson. There are things in this world more valuable than even boundless material