Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, "de Vit.Hum."...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers communicating with each other, and a third in which he slept.
All these rooms were placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark and bush-grown precipice.The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty.With a noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admitted into the inner one.He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by a strong fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the air rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled a snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave regularly over the space.A mortal cold struck to the Englishman's heart, and his blood froze.He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes strained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not be sure that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim, spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it not rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into those moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter of antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully, that the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre, and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms blending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it ceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposed to inhabit.Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floated through the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this atmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind of horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room into the outer one.He heard the door close,--his blood rushed again through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side.Strong convulsions then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the ground insensible.When he recovered, he found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of stone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the dark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who stood beside him with folded arms.
"Young man," said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, how dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it.
Another moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse.""Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was death for me to breathe? Mejnour," continued Glyndon, and his wild desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animated and nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the first steps.I come to you as of old the pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation."Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart,--it beat loud, regularly, and boldly.He looked at him with something almost like admiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, half to himself, "Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found at last." Then, speaking aloud, he added, "Be it so; man's first initiation is in TRANCE.In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreams hovers over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and spirit,--this world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder star!"Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which there then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour than that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on his frame.This, on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and then melted in thin spires into the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance.He still kept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and command his gaze.A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over him, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through his veins.The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star, and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate.It became gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider and broader, it diffused all space,--all space seemed swallowed up in it.And at last, in the midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and at that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into the space itself."Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?"whispered the voice of Mejnour."Viola and Zanoni!" answered Glyndon, in his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
