My Library

of the R. C.) Here he again kissed Stilling’s hand and arm, and wept almost aloud. Stilling answered: ‘No, dear sir; I am neither your nor any one else’s secret superior. I am not in any secret connection whatever.’ The stranger looked at Stilling with a fixed eye, and inward emotion, and replied: ‘Dearest friend, cease to conceal yourself! I have been long tried, and severely enough. I thought you knew me already!’ Stilling: ‘No, Mr. ----, I assure you solemnly that I stand in no secret connection, and in reality understand nothing of all that you require of me!’ “This speech was too strong and too serious to leave the stranger in uncertainty. It was now his turn to be astonished and amazed. He therefore continued: ‘But tell me, then, how is it that you know anything of the great and venerable connection in the East which you have so circumstantially described in the “Nostolgia,” and have even pointed out their rendezvous in Egypt, on Mount Sinai, in the Monastery of Canobin, and under the Temple at Jerusalem?’ ‘I know nothing of all this,’ replied Stilling. ‘But these ideas presented themselves in a very lively manner to my imagination. It was, therefore, mere fable and fiction. “ ‘Pardon me, the matter is the truth and reality as you have described it. It is astonishing that you have hit it in such a manner—this cannot have come by chance!’ The gentleman now