My Library

upon the bald white face of a rare old Flemish clock that occupied the entire southern angle of the room. Here I was left alone by my friends, who again resumed their conversation in the parlor below. “Gradually the old clock-face seemed to clarify and expand, until, no longer obstructed by substance, I gazed out, and down, and up, through an avenue of the most astonishing light I had ever beheld. It seemed to me that I no longer occupied my body, but that, freed from flesh and time, I had become a denizen of Eternity; and on a fleecy vapor I was sustained in mid-air by the potent arm of a strangelooking old man—the veritable and precise image of him who, ten days before, had occasioned us such a fright by his mysterious conversations and evanishment. He told me not to fear, but to repose implicit confidence in myself and him; that he would not injure me, but do me good; that his name was Ettelavar; that his years were ages long; that he was the companion of those who die—who die, and live again—and of those who never taste of death. All this, and more, he told me; and he said that his design was to serve both himself and me; that he was familiar with certain mighty secrets, that had been claimed to be possessed, through many ages, by the wise and learned of earth— the Narek El Gebel, the Hermetists, the Pythagoreans, the three temples of the Rosie