My Library

“During this speech, our attention was diverted from the incarnated to the incarnator—for it must not be forgotten that the entire phenomena exhibited by this wondrous personage, were the creatures of his conscious will, brought into being and again cast out by a thought, and according to a known and transferable formula. True, there were others in whom this creative faculty existed, but then such persons either exercised the power involuntarily through the mechanical processes of mind and will, or else they are but the proxies of the Larvæ. When he ceased speaking the monster was gone from our sight, but not from our hearing, for Mai gently waved his hand, and as he did so there came to us the softest, gentlest, sweetest, and the most soul-stirring strains of music that ever fell on human hearing. Above, below, around, now here, now there, close at hand, and then afar off, it sounded; and the only comparison I can make is, that it sounded like a solemn requiem chaunted by angels over the perished form of what was once a god—the tones were so pathetic, so solemn, so supremely sorrowfreighted—reminding one of the plaintive “ ‘Huhm, meleagar malooshe, Huhm meleagar, ma-looshe,’ only that it was ten-fold more profound, and stirred depths the other could never reach.