istance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the
Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused her
to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which
betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the
heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.

Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my manuscript?
Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional as it seems
to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries. I have never
known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have been such, and
if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot doubt that there
have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he has
read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of
the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In this paper the
mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which I have been
subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in
language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such a change of
polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme
degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and
comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being
uncommon,--is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known
instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious
experiences of it in their own private history.

It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now
dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which
had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I
was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power
which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions of
it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been engrafted
on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as directed, and
watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time darkened, but
it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.

There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity
than she had any right to know. The story was that she had foretold the
assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.

However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art
upon